Distress Call
by Gordoto
Summary: Remember when Peridot sent that distress call to Yellow Diamond? And how nobody answered it except the Crystal Gems? In this tale, one Gem does heed Peridot's call. However, she may not have been the best gem for the job. A lighthearted story, no significant plot changes. Rated T for language at most.
1. Hard Landing

**A/N: This should take place during the events of "Cry for Help" S2E11. Can't promise that I'll change the "plot" in any major ways but I thought it'd be a neat way to practice writing characters that aren't mine. Feel free to leave constructive criticism! I'm moving to updating at least once a week, most likely on Mondays, so that at least my schedule is consistent.**

It was a nice day on the planet Earth. The birds were singing, the breeze was whistling, the grass was...being grass. Really, very idyllic. Around midday, with the sun high in the sky, a sharp _crack!_ split the air and the leaves of the trees in the forest shook rapidly as a sonic shock wave blew past them. Fortunately, only twenty or so very weak trees fell over and didn't land on anything of actual importance.

The source of the disturbance was a small yellow-green pod streaking through the air. It was hurtling towards the ground at speeds determined to be decidedly "too fast" by people deemed "wanting to live." It rocked back and forth as the winds buffeted it, trying to knock it off course, but it would not be deterred! The pod struck in the middle of the forest, ripping through the ground and tearing apart trees and plants daring to get in the way. Swarms of birds flew into the sky as their homes were disturbed, while the shrieking of metal and snapping of wood could be heard for miles around. Fortunately, this was a forest in the middle of nowhere, so no one came to investigate the disturbance.

The pod at last came to rest next to a small pond, steam gently wafting off of it as its exterior cracked and popped as it cooled off. A small indentation that was probably a door could be seen on one of the "sides" of the sphere facing outwards from the newly built crater. After a few minutes passed it began to bulge outwards, with the sharp _clang! clang! clang!_ of kicking on metal being heard coming from inside the pod. But of course, no one was around to hear it. This continued for some time, until finally the door gave up resisting and fell off the side of the pod. From inside the dark depths climbed a strange creature. Its skin was a sort of pale yellow and it had hair that fell in brown curls all around its head. It looked in desperate need of a comb or twenty. As it clambered out of the pod, an observer would have been able to see that it wore clothes resembling a utility jumpsuit by Earth standards, save for a few differences. First, it was a slightly darker shade of yellow than the creature's skin. Second, the collar was stuck upwards in a desperate effort to seem cool. Third, there was no helpful nametag on the front. Instead, situated in the middle of the alien's chest, was a medium sized pale yellow crystal that split and cleaved in many different directions. It was not smooth, it was not pretty, but it as definitely...a _mineral._ And finally, its clothes were clearly a part of its skin, there being no obvious way for it to be removed. On the front, just under its gem, was a slightly faded yellow diamond printed onto the jumpsuit.

The creature gently jumped to the ground, stumbling a bit on the landing. It had a medium build, neither very strong nor very weak looking. On its two arms were odd bronze metallic sleeves, the ends of which formed metal hands. Its face was round, with sunken hazel eyes shielded by a thin yellow glass plate. Its chest was sort of curved outwards, resembling a human female's appearance, but its legs ended in what looked like footie pajama feet, so it clearly wasn't human at all, as if the rock growing out of it wasn't a tip-off The alien looked around, stretched, and then keeled over onto the ground. After a moment, the creature's body _poof!_ 'ed into its gem. The two bronze arms that once adorned its arms clattered to the ground beside the gem, which sat alone for quite some time.

* * *

A few hours later, the gem began to glow. After a moment, light burst forth from the gem, forming a humanoid shape resembling the alien from before, with its two "arms" hastily stuffing themselves into the dropped prosthetic arms. "Oh, my aching head..." groaned the Mineral Alien as it fell back onto the ground. Its voice was rough, like phlegm was permanently stuck in there or how one would imagine a coal miner has to talk around the mountains of ash in their throat. But it was definitely high enough in pitch to qualify as 'feminine.' Slowly, she sat up and looked around the now dark forest. Then she scratched her head a few times. Where was this place? What was this place?

"Most of all..." she said, sucking in her breath, "Who the hell am I!?" she sputtered, clutching her head with both metallic appendages in shock and fright. She jumped to her feet, staring all around her. "Aaaaah! I probably came here for something important too! Stupid piece of crap travel shuttle!" she exclaimed, jumping around to kick the pod she arrived in. A moment passed.

"OW! OWOWOWOW!" she screamed, hopping up and down, grasping her now injured foot while she danced. When the pain finally subsided, she took a deep breath and leaned against the pod. "Okay, okay, calm down gem, you just gotta checklist what's floating around in your skull."

"Uh..."

Several awkward minutes passed. The squirrels nearby watched in interest. A bird chirped.

"...Well I know I came here in this pod," she said lamely, sighing heavily. "Might as well check it out. Maybe my stupid self left me a message."

She re-entered the pod. Inside was just enough room for one person to sit down and a bunch of very important looking consoles and electronic equipment. It was definitely not a good thing that most of them were belching smoke and the ones not issuing smoke were softly spitting sparks at anything that drifted too close. She rummaged around the craft for a bit, trying to find one thing that worked at all. Eventually, grumbling in irritation, she slammed a hand down on the main console. The console obligingly spat out a sheet of paper that looked like a four year old had scribbled all over it, including what had to be a middle finger being raised upward defiantly.

"Oh, hey! Gemglyphs! And in such good handwriting too!" The alien said happily, tearing the paper off out of the pod's aging printer.

"Dear Me, if you're reading this then you slapped the printer again. Please stop abusing the printer, it's the only one that was issued to us and we're not getting another. If you've broken it again, the printer will now print a sheet of paper telling you what to do."

The printer spat out another page, which was eagerly torn off and read through.

All it had drawn on it was a very large, very obvious middle finger.

"Well that's not helpful," she muttered, throwing the papers aside and returning to her search. Eventually, she located a sticky-note taped to the door laying outside the pod.

"deaR me, i hUrt my head pretty hurd wen i landed, pls remem that u need to find the periwinkle cuz of the distress call."

The alien stared at the note, then flipped it over.

"signed, technICAN ASS. amblygonite (haha i wrote ass)."

"p.s. thur was this WEIRD light when we cam dun wish you could remember it, it made my head really fuzzy and hurt a lot okie im leaving the pod now."

"Oh. I guess _I'm_ Amblygonite," muttered the creature, hastily balling up and then tearing the note into tiny pieces. No one need ever know how delirious she had been after landing. What was that about a weird light? She could vaguely remember it, but doing so made her head hurt a lot. It could have possibly been the real cause of her poor memory at the moment, but there were other problems to deal with.

"I could probably fix this thing up if I had materials...And my memories back," grumbled Amblygonite, tapping one thick metal index finger against the hull of the ship. This caused said finger to slide backwards and reform as a drill, scoring a deep gouge across the side of the ship. After several minutes of swearing and hopping about, the alien figured out that by curling her hand into a fist, the finger reformed instead. She stared at her weird arms in interest for a few moments before shrugging. She wouldn't get much done just standing around here, but she also had no idea which way to go.

A few more minutes of searching in the pod revealed a dented PDA that still managed to function. It seemed to be indicating her current position and a blinking dot some distance away. She supposed that should be her destination. So, spirits sort of middlin' and morale low, she set off towards her destination. Whatever this Periwinkle was better be able to explain the need for a distress call and fast. And also maybe give a few pointers on who exactly Amblygonite was supposed to be. And what this yellow diamond on her shirt was supposed to be for.


	2. Long Road Ahead

**A/N: Thanks for all the views/likes/follows from chapter 1! And thank you for your review, toonfreak. I try my best. Sometimes. Humor is pretty hit or miss, so everyone should feel free to leave critique so I can improve! As a fun fact, I revised the opening section of this at least 3 times.**

It was taking way too long to get to this stupid destination. According to the PDA, it was "a lot" of miles (What were miles?) left to go before Amblygonite would catch sight of whatever her objective was. One time, during the night, the PDA seemed to stop working for a while. The destination totally disappeared! Fortunately it came back in an hour or so. Which was good, because during that mysterious hour with no destination, Amblygonite had managed to wander around in circles in the same forest she started in, getting completely lost. When it started working again, she couldn't remember where she left her pod at all. This definitely wouldn't come back to bite her in the rear.

After some time, Amblygonite managed to at least reach a strange flat surface covered in painted lines that led to her destination. Sort of. It veered all over the place but at least it mostly pointed the right way. What a strange planet! Did these grow naturally? She really had to wonder. She wondered about a lot of things lately. Sometimes strange metal boxes rumbled past her at very high speeds, but they never slowed down long enough for her to jump on top of one. She tried to flag some down, but most of them seemed to speed up when she started waving and shouting at them.

After the fourth one passed her, Amblygonite groaned in frustration and tried to vent her frustration by wiggling her arms to and fro in a bizarre frustration dance. Her fingers, mid-wiggle, obediently sank into the sleeves from which they protruded and massive saw blades formed on edges of her synthetic hands instead. Fortunately, she had left her PDA conveniently stored in her try hard permanently popped collar so it wasn't shredded instantly.

"Oh stars!" yelped Amblygonite, now sweating furiously as the blades began to spin violently in place. This was both incredibly dangerous and incredibly cool. To her, anyway. Most people see something like this and run away, usually because of a phobia called "common sense." One of the strange creatures from the boxes, this one actually outside of one and rolling along with weird plastic wheels on its feet, yelped and rapidly ran/roll/tripped away. Amblygonite spared them a glance, but only that much, she was really busy experimentally waving her arms around and listening to the saw blades running. While these would be useful for looking "cool" or threatening someone in exchange for money, they didn't really help her much.

However...

She glanced back in the direction that the rolling creature had fled in. Then down at the road. A monumentally dumb idea was forming in her head, but no one was there to stop her from doing it.

Slowly, carefully, she slid down to reach eye level with the road. Then she extended one of her whirling hands of death towards the road. Tongue between her teeth, she touched the blade to the asphalt, resulting in her arm flying in the opposite direction and a shower of sparks falling in her hair. She almost noticed the burning sensation telling her this was a bad idea. But almost doesn't win you Darwin awards. Plus, she was an experimenter at heart and walking was taking way too long.

Amblygonite stood up, cricked her neck, then strode into the middle of the road. "Okay, this should definitely probably work. Just don't saw my own legs off, yeah, that'd be not good..." she murmured to herself, squinting at the road. In one movement, she jumped up, curled her legs up, and touched her blades onto the road.

A cascade of sparks shot out from the road, spinning Amblygonite forwards like a top thrown by a particularly angry toddler. "CRAP! DOUBLE CRAP! TRIPLE CRAP!" she hollered, shifting wildly from one arm to another in an effort to avoid falling painfully on the asphalt below her. Deep gouges were scored into the pavement as she swerved crazily along the road, jumping and bouncing along as Newton's Third Law made her its plaything.

"SLOW DOWN! SLOW DOWN! OUTTA THE WAY FLESHY THING!" she continued to bellow, swerving crazily past the distraught creature who had fled from her earlier. It stared, mouth agape, as the alien shot forwards along the road. In a last ditch effort to keep herself from getting dashed by a tree, Amblygonite jerked her arms in the direction of the grass on the side of the road. When her hands touched grass, the sudden loss in proper traction combined with the softness of the earth sent the gem skittering along the ground, collecting tons of fun new grass stains.

After about ten minutes spent laying on the ground, she levered herself back onto her feet, glancing at the blades to see if they had been dulled by their adventure on the road. Aside from looking a little muddy from hitting the grass, the blades actually looked as sharp as ever. Satisfied, she nodded, then whooped. "That was _wicked_ awesome!" she cheered.

Now that she had some idea of what to expect, she repeated her earlier process on the road again. This time she was able to control her path a little better, but still ended up toppling over after a while and skidding back onto the grass. Not about to be told what to do by physics, she got back up and tried for a third time.

 _This_ time, she managed to maintain her balance. By constantly and carefully making slight adjustments in the hitches of her arms, she was able to destroy decade old infrastructure for a moderate gain in speed on her mission to rescue a Periwinkle. She was also laughing the whole way down the road, looking like the world's most insane skater punk ever born.

Incidentally, "Insane Skater Punk" would make a decent name for a band.

Now armed with a speedier method of travel that looked incredibly stupid, Amblygonite's rate of travel tripled in speed. She chewed up the distance between her and her objective at ludicrous speed, while also scaring the daylights out of 10 different motorists and requiring thousands in tax dollars to repair her damage.

After a few hours of traveling like this, she abruptly ran out of road to destroy and toppled face first into the dirt, roller blades (Ba-zing) fruitlessly chewing into the soft earth and getting absolutely no traction once more. She had to spend a painful few minutes trying to pull her arms free from the dirt, then another few trying to pretend she still had fingers until her gloves obligingly gave them back. Then she spent a half hour with crippling pain in her arms from how sore they were from being stuck in the same position for hours at a time. Fortunately this didn't stop her from walking, so she made pretty good time, despite complaining the whole time.

At some point during the day, her PDA had lost the signal to her objective again, but it seemed to be back now. Plus there were a lot less of these 'mile' things between her and the blip now! She let out a celebratory whoop, happy that she'd probably get some answers much sooner rather than later. She wished her legs had the same funny gloves her arms did, in a way. Her legs were incredibly normal! It was frustrating. Maybe if she could remember how to be a "technican ass" she'd figure out how to build rocket boots or something.

With that thought to cheer her up, she continued on her merry way, passing through one town and a whole lotta forest. She paid the local inhabitants no mind, however, which caused some consternation when she blundered through a family reunion, nose buried in her PDA as it screeched about how close she was getting to her goal. Feet covered in cake, she continued right past the confused and angry uncle So-and-so's and nephew What's-their-names until she hit the edge of a cliff. From there, she could actually _see_ what her goal was.

It was a bunch of pillars being smashed by a giant purple thingy.

Large beads of sweat broke out under Amblygonite's visor as she jumped behind a bush despite there being no chance of the thing actually seeing her. Not only was it on an island miles away from where she stood, it was also gigantic and therefore unlikely to notice barely reaching 5'8" alien creatures with saw blades for hands. She watched in frustration for a while as it destroyed the pillars until it eventually left, along with two other smaller shapes trailing behind it. She hoped no one expected her to fight that thing! _Maybe_ talk to it. From a distance. With a megaphone. And heavy artillery.

Once they were gone, Amblygonite walked forwards and fell off the cliff leading down to the water below.

 _Ker-splash!_

From there, she walked along the seabed until she reached the island. Traveling was very easy when you don't need to breathe or care about water pressure as much as most people do. As she climbed up and over onto the sandy, desert-like area, she shook herself off from head to toe. She walked towards the ruins of the ruins, noting that many of the pillars seemed to now be reduced to sand and tiny little bits.

"Huh. Well, I hope that this wasn't some sort of secret project named Periwinkle. I definitely can't fix _dust,_ " she mused, scratching her chin and narrowly taking the finger away just in time as it changed into a screwdriver. A few moments of wiggling and it returned to normal.

"I really hope I kept more notes on this thing," she murmured, taking out her PDA and flicking through a few of the menus on it. Most of its systems seem to have been fried by its initial landing on the planet. There was one last saved log entry on it, however, noting that a distress call had been heard coming from Earth. Which was what she already knew.

Amblygonite sighed and sat down, hands holding her up from behind.

"What to do now? I guess I can hope Periwinkle isn't the ruins and is a person, but I'm pretty sure I can't check the whole planet on my own!" she groaned, giving up and collapsing on the sand underneath her, staring up at the stars above. "Ugh, I'm still talking to myself too. Pretty sure that's the first sign I'm going insane. Like having no memory, using saw blades as skates, and seeing giant purple...giants isn't a textbook definition of psychosis."

She lay like that for some time, just staring up at the stars above her. They twinkled merrily. Amblygonite shook her fist at them for a while but that got boring.

"Oh no...OH YOU MINERAL HUFFING **CLODS!"** screeched a whiny voice into the night, causing Amblygonite to flip out. Literally. She flipped over on the sand and had to spend a few seconds spitting the gritty substance out. She stood up, peering around for the source of the noise. There appeared to be a dancing figure by the freshly sand-ified ruins! And it was screaming vulgarities about the Crystal Clods! Whatever those were!

"Oooh! Oooh!" called Amblygonite, sprinting for the dancing person by the fresh sand. She only tripped once or twice, but managed to just barely keep her balance, right up until she slammed into the person screaming about clods. The pair of them went down in a tangle of confusion and limbs. Confusing limbs. It took a few minutes for them to pull apart.

"What the- Are you some other member of the Crystal Clods?" asked the green stranger (She looked like a Peridot to Amblygonite, so maybe her memory was getting better) as she pointed her digits at Amblygonite in what looked a lot like a cannon.

This was confirmed when electricity began surging through it.

Amblygonite smiled and held up her hands, wiggling her digits in what she hoped was a friendly manner. One of the fingers turned into a tiny drill again. The other gem's lips tightened.

"Me? I don't know what you're talking about! I don't even know what a Crystal Clod is!" she said in as cheerful a tone as possible. If she just _pretended_ she wasn't about to get shattered, maybe that would end up becoming reality.

"Are you with Yellow Diamond?" Peridot asked, squinting at Amblygonite. "I'll know if you're lying! D-don't take me for a fool!"

"Is that what this thing is?" Amblygonite asked, pointing her drill finger at the diamond on her front.

Peridot hesitated for a moment, then lowered her weapon cautiously. "You're the backup I requested from Yellow Diamond?" she asked, sounding surprised. "Where's the rest of your unit?"

"What unit?" Amblygonite asked. "I came here by myself! I had a pretty hard landing too, really knocked my head around. My memory's been pretty bad lately, are you the Periwinkle I was told to find?"

" _Peridot,"_ Peridot corrected tersely. "I see you're an Amblygonite. Why did they send a technician construction assistant?"

"Is that what my title is?" Amblygonite wondered. "That sounds pretty cool! I guess that explains these weird arms I got! Uh, I dunno. I had some notes in my pod telling me to find you, but my PDA was too trashed to tell me anything else," she explained, holding up her damaged digital assistant for Peridot to expect.

Peridot collapsed her arm cannon and grasped the object. Then, after fiddling with it for a few moments and doing some truly amazing work with those weird digits of hers, the PDA sparked and thrummed just loud enough to be heard. She dug through some of the files on it, then blanched. "Oh...Oh no..." she said.

Amblygonite walked over and peered over her shoulder.

"Mission: Investigate strange distress call signed by a Peridot on planet known as "Earth." Signal too garbled for us to understand what she needs help with. Report back using pod communication array once circumstances are known."

"Huh," Amblygonite mused. "I guess those pillars were the last bits of a communication hub! And it was in really bad shape! So your message got totally lost in translation. Wow, I guess all those spills earlier really helped my memory!"

Peridot nodded dumbly, still staring at the personal digital assistant's message. Then, in a fit of inarticulate rage, she screeched and snapped the device over her knee. Amblygonite took a step backwards. Apparently they made the things waterproof but not Angry Peridot proof.

"That's okay, we can just head back to my shuttle and..."

She snapped her fingers. A small welding torch flicked open out of her thumb.

"Riiiiight, yeah that's not going to work."

"Why not!?" asked Peridot, sounding close to panic.

"Because I left it in the middle of some woods and I don't remember how to get back there. Also, I broke it. And the printer. Ooh, that's gonna be a pain to fix."

" _Perrrrrrfect_ ," hissed Peridot. She stalked off into the night. Amblygonite hesitated, then followed after her.

"Wait up! I can still help you!" she called, jogging up to just behind Peridot. "Since, you know, we're both stuck here now."

Peridot groaned loudly.


	3. A Tale of Two Gems

**A/N: I'll be shifting towards at _least_ one update per week (Usually on Mondays). I'm not sure what the end game of this fic is going to be yet, but since I'm usually writing a few chapters ahead of what I post, hopefully it won't be terrible when we get there.**

"So where are we going?" asked Amblygonite.

"Why are you still following me?" Peridot asked irritably.

They had been walking for some time. It seemed to Amblygonite that they were just heading to the opposite side of the island, but she didn't have a better idea of where to go. The island appeared to be mostly rocks, sand, and more sand. It wasn't as pretty as the forest was. Maybe she could convince Peridot to go back to the forest! But, ooh, then she'd have to look for the pod and the Peridot would probably get uber ticked at how badly it got smashed up if they found it. It was probably totally unusable now. Amblygonite swallowed nervously.

"Because I was told to help you!" Amblygonite pointed out after a few moments, folding her arms and blanching when the sides of her 'arms' started spraying thick foam at the ground. These things were just getting silly now.

Peridot glanced at the other gem's unique arms as Amblygonite quickly uncrossed her arms to stop the foam. "Limb enhancers?" she asked.

"Is that what these are?" Amblygonite asked. "I hit my head _really_ hard. I think. I'm pretty sure I wasn't quite as..."

"Stupid? Clod-like? Ditzy?"

"Yeah those, I think I was at least a little more serious before. Or maybe I was just always this way!"

"It must be a product of your inferior materialization then," Peridot said simply. Which was incredibly hurtful, but Amblygonite had to also admit she was probably right. Still, _ow!_

"What makes you say that?" she asked the green gem, shoving her hurt feelings into the dark pit of her mind where they'd rot forever.

"Not only do you exhibit...diminished intellectual capacity at the moment, but your arms have been augmented to compensate for a lack of certain...abilities. Such as transformation, it seems," Peridot explained, marching onward and keeping her eyes facing forward.

"At least they're really cool augmentations!" Amblygonite pointed out. "I'm finding new tools all the time! I even used some to get here to you. I was rolling over these weird flat surfaces with metal boxes rolling on them..."

"You're speaking nonsense."

"I swear it's true! There are these weird paved areas with lines on them all around! If you stay on them long enough, big metal boxes speed past you and make loud beeps at you! It's bizarre, but quite exhilarating. I tried to jump on some but they all sped away. They had these weird things inside them..."

"Probably humans. They're the dominant lifeform on this planet."

"Is that what they're called?" Amblygonite scratched her head, pausing for a second to wait for her drill to recede afterwards. "Strange. None of them even stopped to say hello. And who were those people breaking the communication hub?" If they were an army of giants with tiny handlers she was quite prepared to override her earlier indecision and start looking for that pod.

"Some rebellious upstarts that have upset the mission here," Peridot said irritably, rolling her eyes. This was an awful lot of explaining to do. They had reached the shore now and Peridot looked at her new 'companion.' Looking her up and down, Peridot was completely unimpressed. Of _course_ all she got sent was a third-rate builder gem. Not even a quality Bismuth!

"Do any of your tools assist in traversing aquatic terrain easily?"

"Let me check!" Amblygonite did a series of complicated dance maneuvers, causing a variety of different tools to pop out of her arms, but none of them looked especially useful for moving across water, except-

"Is that a mark V ice crystalizer?" Peridot asked, suddenly interested.

"This?" Amblygonite asked, holding up the flat of her palm. Inside of it (Contained within a hole behind a shimmering force field) was a bubbling blue ball of what could only be called 'goop.' It bubbled, hissed, and dribbled messily, but it didn't leave the confines of the hole in her palm. "I guess. Maybe?"

"Throw it in the water and see!" Peridot ordered.

"You're the boss!" the gem responded, thrusting her hand forward and ejecting the ball into the water. It hit with a small plop and sank. Nothing happened for a few minutes. Then the water started hissing and frothing, until-

"OH _BOULDERS!"_ cried Peridot, diving onto the ground as a moderate explosion rocked the earth in front of them, forming a huge geyser of water and showering them in a small rainstorm for a few moments. Amblygonite was absolutely intrigued, despite being thrown backwards onto the ground by the force of the blast.

"Woah! What was that thing? Hey! Hey! Listen! Peridot! Peridot! Peri! Peri! Pear! Pear! Pear!" badgered Amblygonite endlessly, nudging Peridot with her toe each time. Peridot seemed to still be in shock over nearly getting blown to pieces, judging by how she had her hands cover her head and was cowering on the ground.

" **WHAT!?** " screamed the beleaguered Peridot, turning to glare daggers at the other gem.

"Do you know what tool that was?"

"Not a mark V crystalizer," Peridot said sourly, getting onto her feet and brushing herself off, acting like she was too cool for this stupidity. "It was presumably explosive gel, used for quick demolition work."

"Oh." The brown gem hastily clenched her fist before she shot a wad of the jelly at her own feet. Why would someone pack this much destruction into one gem? Or, rather, arm? She glanced at her other arm, suddenly concerned about it also shooting out balls of explosive fire.

"Yes, it usually has a long priming time so it can't be used as a weapon." That fact Peridot was infinitely grateful for. Giving someone _this_ careless demolition gel was a terrible idea. Had that landing really damaged her that much? Surely she _had_ to have been different before whatever damage she suffered.

Peridot sighed, then raised one hand into the air and clutched her legs to her chest. Her 'fingers' started spinning in a rapid circle, pulling Peridot into the air. Amblygonite whooped and gave her two thumbs up, very impressed. Peridot felt very tired.

"You'll just have to follow me from under the water!" Peridot called down, snickering at getting to lord at least some power over a lesser ranked gem. Amblygonite frowned for a moment, but shrugged.

"Your call. Just don't get too high! And where are we going?"

"We're heading to another warp pad! We need to use the galaxy warp to get back to Homeworld since both of our ships are destroyed!"

"Are you going to teach me how to fix it if it's broken?"

"Er...Sure," Peridot answered.

Amblygonite nodded, giving her 'boss' another thumbs up before heading under the waves, following the distant shadow of Peridot high above her. She might even catch a fish while she was underwater this time! She wondered if Peridot would accept it as a peace offering.

* * *

Eventually they hit land, Peridot coming in for a safe landing as Amblygonite climbed up from the ocean depths. The latter spat out a wad of salt water and shook her hair again, which now needed a comb worse than ever. Peridot's hair looked great in comparison, and _her_ hair resembled a Dorito chip!

Not that either of them knew what that was.

"So how close are we?" Amblygonite asked after wringing her hair out and shoving it roughly back into place. A fish jumped out from her upturned collar and flailed back into the ocean. Amblygonite turned to watch it leave sadly. Goodbye peace offering.

"Not too much farther," Peridot said, studying a map formed out of her fingers. Amblygonite badly wanted to ask where she could get gadgets that cool, but she figured it'd probably be pointless. Maybe if she schmoozed the other gem enough...

"What exactly were you doing here in the first place? You said something about a mission?"

"It's nothing you need to worry about. Well, I guess you should worry about it, but at this rate we should be able to get off the planet in time before we have to worry about it," she answered ambiguously, leaving Amblygonite more confused (Which was getting distressingly common) than ever.

"So...Uh..."

"Just don't worry about it," Peridot finished for her, closing her map and marching on ahead. They eventually came upon another warp pad that was damaged and smashed in several places. Peridot almost began to fix it herself, but then glanced at Amblygonite as the other gem kicked over a few of the pieces and bent to look over them.

"I'm sure you can handle this, assistant," the Peridot said importantly.

Amblygonite looked up at Peridot and grinned, snapping a traditional diamond salute. "Right away! I'm sure it'll come naturally to me!"

She started hauling the pieces of the pad back towards the center, seeing as that would be a logical place to start. This took a while because a lot of the pieces had managed to get scattered during the time that the pad had been damaged. Peridot spent the time recording something in her logs.

"Hey, Peridot?" Amblygonite asked as she gathered the rocks together at the pad.

" _Yeeeeesssss?_ " Peridot answered testily.

"Did you come here with anyone else?"

"Yes, two others. One of them was my escort, the other an informant."

"Then why wasn't the distress call for them too?"

"Did that part not get through?"

"Nope. Or it did and I forgot," she clanged one metal arm on her own head. Lightly. "Memory loss, remember?" She snorted at her own joke.

You could almost hear the whistling noise as the same joke passed right over Peridot's head.

"Right...No, I've lost track of them. The last time I saw them they went down with our ship. I've been trying to get off this planet ever since."

Amblygonite whistled low. "That sucks. These Crystal Clods-"

"The official term they, ugh, use is 'Crystal Gems.'"

"Crystal Gems must be pretty tough! Especially with that huge purple thing-"

"What?"

"Didn't you see it smashing the hub?" the assistant asked, moving one part of the pad into place and making a finger gun motion until a tube filled with a clear, sticky liquid jumped up on top of her index finger. She shook her head for a moment, then shrugged. Natural instinct? She'd think about it later.

"It was gigantic! It smashed everything into pieces and was super angry! I didn't know they made Gems like that! Well, I don't _think_ I didn't know." She'd have to think on that phrase for a while to see if it made any sense.

"They...don't. These Crystal Gems are fond of using fusions to augment their fighting capabilities," Peridot clarified while the other gem spread the liquid around the damaged parts of the pad, sealing it back up.

"Fusions? What are those?"

"Are you serious?" Peridot gaped.

"As serious as this pad is damaged. Which is very serious. Like, wow, did someone with anger issues try to validate themselves all over this or what?" she said, laughing at her 'joke' as she continued her work.

"...What?" Peridot asked, dumbfounded.

"Well you see, it's like..." she trailed off, frowning at her feet for a few moments. "Uh. Y'see. It's. Er. Look the point is that this thing is _messed_ up! Super bad! So, fusions? Ha ha!" she finished, laughing nervously and feeling heat rising to her face.

"O...kay," Peridot said wearily, keeping an eye on the other gem as she worked now. "Fusions are when two gems combine their powers into one, although it's not limited to two gems. This is usually only done during war and doing it any time outside of that is disgusting. Which makes it worse that one of those Crystal Clods is _always_ a fusion!"

"They always have that purple thing?"

"No, it's- No. Usually there's four of them. Garnet, the fusion, a Pearl above her place, a half-formed Amethyst, and the Steven, who seems to be their leader for some reason."

"What's a Steven?" Amblygonite asked, casually sliding a piece of the pad she just smashed after somehow turning her thumb into a hammer out of the way.

"It's...Look, enough with the questions, okay!?" pleaded Peridot. "Why are _you_ in such high spirits anyway? We're _trapped_ on this planet with a bunch of rebels! And we're running out of time before the c- before they find us!"

"Well, I don't think it'd help anything to be sad and cry about it," Amblygonite replied, the slip shooting past her like an errant fly. "I mean, I guess it might feel nice. But I just crush those weird feelings I get sometimes down into the back of my head and forget about them!" Her right eye twitched slightly. This is perfectly fine.

Peridot nodded slowly. "I...Guess that makes sense. That's actually a pretty good idea in these circumstances."

"Well, I do try." She paused for a moment, looking at how damaged the warp pad was, then back up at Peridot. "Should we rest here for a few days? I think it might help me a lot to experiment while I work on this thing. I might be able to remember more about how I, you know, work?" she indicated one of her arms.

Peridot paled slightly at the phrase 'a few days.' "Uh. Maybe not much longer than a day or two. I can scout the area while you work on this, but we can't really afford to waste any time."

"Hey, that works for me! Why not tell me about these rebels at the same time? I should probably know how to fight them if we see them!"

"You'd actually fight them?"

"I wouldn't really like it, but yeah, I guess I can give it a try!" Amblygonite said proudly. "After all, I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to listen to all your orders and serve you blindly. It sounds like the right thing to do. It definitely feels right when I say it, anyway!"

"In that case..." Peridot considered, then began to regale Amblygonite a tale of dastardly rebels overthrowing the proper diamond authority of the planet. She really made them sound like awful people, but Amblygonite ate it right up. How could her leader be wrong? She ooh'd and aww'd at all the right places while she continued to work, even shaking her fist and fuming when Peridot told her about how they crashed the ship despite the green gem's brave fight against them, even if her Jasper had fallen almost immediately!

"They really took your whole ship down?" she asked, incredulous. She was somewhat regretting hear eagerness to stand up against them.

"Oh yes, probably because they lacked the proper training to pilot it. Unlike me," Peridot said haughtily. "I was fortunately able to escape when they had their backs turned. But if you follow my lead, we'll definitely be off this planet in no time at all!"

Amblygonite stood up and saluted her Peridot proudly, patriotism in her heart!

Peridot was, suffice it to say, pleased.


	4. A Real Fixer-Upper

**A/N: Longest chapter yet, thanks for the reviews and follows! For those curious, Amblygonite is formed from the Greek words for blunt and angle due to its perfect cleavage. It can be used for gemstones but is vulnerable to abrasions over time due to poor hardness.**

Peridot left Amblygonite alone for a while to check the nearby area. Amblygonite used the time to continue working on the pad and testing out the various contraptions in her arm. Now with an actual opportunity to test herself out, she was starting to figure out what exactly her arms were capable of.

Most of the time they seemed to act of their own accord, but if she focused her mind on the type of tool she needed for a task, it seemed her arms were capable of supplying it! She had tried using this to get a "instant everything fixer" but that just made her hands start feeling really hot. Fixing the pad itself didn't actually seem to be all that hard, and soon enough she could feel power coursing through it again. All it took was finding every single piece of rubble and gluing it all back on, then opening this weird hatch and fiddling with some of the wiring inside for a bit. Oh, and she had to stand on top of it and draw... _something_ into it with a weird injector tool that popped out of her left ring finger. She had no idea what she was doing really, but it came pretty instinctively, so she figured it must be training kicking in.

She'd leave out the part where she resorted to hitting the top of the pad with a hammer for two minutes before she noticed a panel had burst open. And the part where she dropped two globs of sealant into the interior of the pad before shutting the hatch closed. Those were parts where training did not kick in.

Peridot was still gone once this was done, so Amblygonite decided to try out the rest of her tools. If she kept her index finger pointed long enough, a thin laser pointer emerged from its tip that could leave diagrams hovering in mid-air for a minute or two. She amused herself with this by drawing her name in bubble letters and then doodling an image of Peridot being ludicrously angry next to it.

If she clapped her hands rapidly, one of her hands would reform into a hammer, while the fingers of the other hand would slide together and form a chisel. She spent the rest of the time waiting for Peridot's return by chiseling a nearby rock into a statue of herself. However, considering her artistic skills were near absolute zero, she only managed to make what resembled a very friendly looking triangle by the time of the other gem's return.

She also noticed that her design of Peridot appearing very angry was still lingering in the air, which she hastily stood in front of as Peridot flew down from on high and landed in front of her.

"How goes the repair of the warp pad?" Peridot asked, trying to ignore the vacuous smile from the rock statue nearby. It was hard to do, that thing's eyes seemed to follow her everywhere.

"Perfect! I think most of my memories from working are coming back!" Amblygonite answered proudly. "It should be functioning again. You know, assuming whatever broke it in the first place doesn't come back."

"Great," Peridot said, ignoring everything beyond 'perfect' coming out of the other gem's mouth. "Follow me, I've located something we should work on fixing as a backup plan."

"Is it another escape route?" Amblygonite asked as she followed Peridot into the surrounding forest.

"No, unfortunately. It's too old to be used for that purpose. However, it has another use which should be hopefully clear to you when we see it."

"How long should that take to get there?"

"Not too long, I'm surprised we didn't find it sooner."

The cartoon image of Peridot faded from sight as they left the area, never to be remembered. Rest in peace.

* * *

After a few minutes' travel, the unlikely duo came to a massive crashed ship.

"Wooooooahhhhh," Amblygonite gasped, running forwards to rub her hands all over it. It was big! Grey! And menacing! She liked all those adjectives!

"Yes, yes, very impressive. Please stop getting dirt all over yourself," Peridot said, opening the front door with her hand. Amblygonite sheepishly pulled herself off the wall and followed Peridot inside, brushing dirt from her hair.

Inside was a disused room that had all sorts of dirt and plants crawling all over it. Bugs skittered to and fro, technology sat unused in different corners, and a single spider was drawing a web over what appeared to be a microphone.

"So...How are we going to use this?" Amblygonite asked. "Because I don't think sneezing is going to launch us in the air very far. I mean that's creative, but we'd need _so_ much more dust!"

Peridot dragged a hand across her face.

"No you clod, we're going to fix the ship's weapon systems! If the Crystal Clods try to follow me again, I'll be able to trap them in here and deal with them! Then we can escape this planet and have them all wrapped up for Homeworld to deal with!"

"Ohhhh, that makes much more sense. So. What do we start fixing?"

"Uh..." Peridot hesitated, chewing her lips and looking around. A few laser cannons were nestled in corners of the ceiling, presumably for...

"Why are there cannons _inside_ the ship?" Amblygonite spoke up. "Were they planning on the crew rebelling?"

"That doesn't matter!" Peridot snapped. "Just get up there and, uh, check to see if they work or something! I'm going to find the control room!"

"How?"

"How what?"

"How am I supposed to get up there? I can't fly! And my legs don't have ladders attached to them! Well, I guess they could if I had some spare parts. When we get to Homeworld do you think they'll let me augment my legs too?"

Peridot sighed. It was a very long sigh. It was a sigh that spoke of long suffering and frustration.

Amblygonite sighed too. Not because she was frustrated, she just didn't want to be the only one sighing.

"Okay. Amblygonite," Peridot began very patiently. Her hands' digits aligned with each other, forming the traditional 'I'm trying not to smack you upside the head but boy am I getting close to it' gesture of having both palms calmly held together while still pointing at someone. "You have tools, yes? I can imagine that you were made to have intelligence, much like me. Try and use your tools to find a way up there, like how you described using them to catch up with me before."

"I can't cut the walls down until they reach me! That would really destroy the atmosphere of this place. And also destroy this place."

Peridot was already walking away down a corridor, muttering distinctly about clods and the intelligence of lower order gems.

Amblygonite watched her go, then turned towards the first cannon. It was basically just a small crystal on a stick connected to a sort of vase-like aperture. It was way high up on the ceiling.

"Okay arms...Transform!" she shouted, thrusting her hands forward. Nothing happened.

"Activate!"

Nope.

"Turn on!"

Nada.

"Fire!"

A pebble fell over.

Amblygonite blew a raspberry, then walked over the wall below the cannon and pressed her palm against it. "If I wanted to climb really fast...I'd need like, a ladder. Nah that's too big. A rope?"

She took a few steps back and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. She thought of only rope and climbing. How much fun it would be to climb. How climbing and rope were the best things ever! She felt something start to shift in her left arm, and when she opened her eyes she totally panicked.

"WHAT THE HELL!?" she screeched, watching a good chunk of her arm shift to the side as a coil of rope fell out of the exposed end. The chunk that shifted off reformed into a wheel with a level. When Amblygonite (very, very grudgingly) looked down the bottom of the new hole in her arm, she saw something glinting like a spear tip.

She blinked a few times, then shrugged and pointed it up at the ceiling next to her destination. "Uh. Fire?"

Still nothing.

She thought for a few moments. For some reason, she was reminded of a small human's t-shirt she had glanced at while passing through some sort of celebration. Despite all the yelling, she had noticed the little human's shirt because of its cartoonish design of a man using a robotic limb to assist himself, complete with catch phrase.

"...Go go gadget grappling gun?" she tried, feeling foolish.

The spear shot out of her arm with a jolt that shook her all the way to the shoulder, then buried itself in the ceiling above. After a second, the spear whirred, then drilled slightly deeper into the wall for better purchase. Deciding to just go along with this insanity, Amblygonite gripped the lever on the wheel with her other arm and started spinning it. After a few moments, she felt herself getting pulled upwards. She was very thankful most of the weight seemed to be going towards her augment and not her actual arm, because otherwise her shoulder might have exploded at this point.

After a minute of work, she was at eye level with the cannon. Only now did she realize she had no way of actually seeing if anything was wrong with it.

Fortunately, Peridot appeared on a gigantic holo-screen from behind to scare the living daylights out of her.

"HEY! AMBLYGONITE!" Peridot yelled, causing Amblygonite to scream again and spin wildly around next to the ceiling.

"You don't need to yell!" she answered, angling her voice down to the microphone.

Peridot squinted for a few seconds, eyes searching around until she found Amblygonite. The jumpsuited gem waved happily with her good arm. Peridot decided not to ask what was going on with her arm.

"Have you been able to repair the cannons yet?" Peridot asked.

"Uh. How do I tell if they're broken?"

"Well you...!" Peridot started, then paused. "Uh. Oh! Look! See, here's a button to see if they work! I'll just press it and-"

"PERIDOT WAIT I'M STILL-" Amblygonite screeched, throwing herself violently out of the way and scrabbling against the ceiling as the cannon in front of her shot a pink laser out at the ground. The nearly dissected technician was left swinging and cursing at Peridot, heart pounding like mad.

Peridot, like all good gem leaders, accepted absolutely no fault. "See? They work! Good job, Amblygonite," she congratulated.

Amblygonite had the good grace to smile and thank Peridot instead of continuing to rage.

"Right. I think everything here is mostly working. I'm coming back down there to inspect the garbage disposal, I want to see if it can stand up to sustained assault, I might be able to use it as a trap!" Peridot said.

"What should I do?"

"Uh, duh? Head down the corridor I went down. It's the big room with the trap door in the middle and the two big wheels..."

"Riiiiiiight," Amblygonite said, nodding as if those directions were good.

"Excellent. Peridot, out."

Amblygonite smiled, shaking her head. Peridot sure was weird. Despite nearly frying Amblygonite a few seconds ago, there was an odd quirkiness about her that made her somewhat endearing. Amblygonite considered for a few moments that this may be the greatest sign of all that she was going insane. She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she didn't notice the anchor point of her spear give way, sending her plummeting to the ground with a panicked yelp.

She hit the metal with a thud, fortunately on her back and not her front.

" _Owwww..."_ she groaned, slowly getting up and stretching her back out. A few bits of metal fell on her head from the hole her grappling gun had added to the ceiling. Limping now, she headed down the corridor as indicated by Peridot.

* * *

Eventually, Amblygonite found the room Peridot had been talking about. At least, she found the two big wheels. This was after accidentally triggering the trap door mechanism and nearly falling into the death pit in the middle of the room. Through a series of yelps and screams, she had narrowly managed to grab the edge of the pit with one augmented arm and pull herself out. Turns out pull-ups are easy to do when your arms are made of metal and you're also certain you're 2 seconds from being shattered.

So now she waited, glancing up at the two large wheels on the ceiling. They hadn't been used in such a long time, there were masses of spider webs growing over them and a serious helping of dust. Amblygonite was reasonably sure her arsenal didn't include a vacuum or a duster. Maybe she'd get away with just breathing really hard at the mess instead.

Peridot floated down from above a few minutes later, collapsing her 'helicopter' digits back into hand form as she landed next to Amblygonite. She looked reasonably happy, presumably because the ship still functioned miraculously.

"I see you found the location I described easily," Peridot said approvingly. Amblygonite rubbed her shoulder.

"Yeah, uh, I guess. You didn't tell me that the floor up there would collapse and throw me down here though."

"It does?" Peridot said, surprised. A devious thought formed in her head while she disregarded the threat to life and limb her partner had obviously gone through. "That's excellent! I can leave some form of bait in case they escape the laser hall! Then they'll just fall down here and..."

She paused, looking down at the other gem.

"...How did you get out of the pit?"

Amblygonite waved one of her arms that looked like it was now in serious need of buffing and waxing. "Techno enhancements, Peri! If I hadn't gotten lucky and grabbed the ledge I would have been stuck down there. For like, a few minutes I guess. If you got the right tools you could climb out of there eventually."

Peridot nodded, stepping closer to the ledge to inspect the garbage disposal. Why did a ship even need one of these things? Why not just toss junk out the airlock? Amblygonite shook her head. Nothing made too much sense lately.

"Okay, I have the perfect job for you," Peridot said after a moment.

"Do I have to get shot at by another cannon?"

"Of course not," Peridot dismissed casually. "Just jump down there and see if you can break out through the walls. _Without_ explosive gel," she added hastily.

"Ooookay, what about the wheels? Do I need to clean those too?"

"I'm sure those still function fine. The important part is making sure those Crystal Clods can't escape from my trap!"

Amblygonite shrugged, then stepped over to the ledge herself and looked down. It was a long way down. She wasn't even sure that her grappling hook could reach all the way back up if she fell down there. Oh, but if she didn't agree to jump down there, Peridot would get all mad and shout-y. Angry Peridot or possible entrapment?

Amblygonite grasped the ledge with both hands and lowered herself as much as she could into the pit, then let go. It was an easy choice.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-OOF! PAIN!" she yelled all the way down to the bottom, managing to stick the landing at great cost to her ankles. It was a good thing gems didn't actually have bones.

"Okay, you made it! Now start trying to escape!" Peridot called down from above.

Amblygonite stared at the four walls surrounding her, trying to ignore the intense throbbing from her ankles. Then she raised her index finger and tapped it on one a few times until it turned into a tiny drill. From there, it began to very, very, painfully slowly break through the wall.

"Okay! I'll be out in roughly a century or so!" Amblygonite called back cheerfully.

"Can you try to escape a _little_ faster?!" Peridot said with exasperation heavy in her voice.

"Anyone ever tell you that you're not much fun?" Amblygonite replied, laughing slightly.

"Irrelevant!"

Amblygonite rolled her eyes and retracted her drill. Well, if she wanted to escape sometime this century she'd need another plan. Her grappling hook couldn't reach that far, she figured. No way to just hoist herself back up here.

"Climbing tool, climbing tool. Digs into rocks...easy to use..." she said aloud, brainstorming a possible escape mechanism. Then, like a bolt of particularly accurate lightning, it came to her. She performed the same wiggling (mostly side to side and two small hops) from when she was next to the road the previous day.

Once again, the whirring sawblades of bad decisions made their appearance. She immediately thrust the first one at the wall. It promptly bounced back off of it at an angle. Satisfied that this was definitely a good plan, she got her arm back under control and then aligned herself to be facing the opposite wall.

"C'mon, just try not to faceplant into the wall or think about how much it's going to hurt if you fall..." she said, trying to gather her courage. Then, with a sharp intake of breath, she jumped up and thrust her hands behind herself.

She promptly got launched into the corner of the pit, smashing against the wall with a painful sounding _Cr-Crack!_ before slowly sliding back to the floor. Then she disappeared in a cloud of smoke, limb enhancers hitting the floor with solid _clangs!_

Peridot was slowly shaking her head, watching the whole ordeal. She had several choice comments in mind for what she just saw, but she decided to save them for when she was in a really foul temper.

After 30 minutes, Amblygonite quickly reformed and was ready to try again, a true testament to how just ignoring pain slash quasi-death telling you to stop being stupid will ensure you're always ready to keep going.

She was also now considering trying to find some sort of armored plate to put in front of her gem, which was miraculously still not cracked.

"Okay, bad idea number two down the drain..." she murmured. Maybe she just wasn't using the right tool. Wasn't there something else besides drills that could dig past metal and rock? Bombs. But she wasn't supposed to use bombs. A really sharp blade? But she didn't have any swords on her! Maybe a-

"Well that works," she said, nonplussed as her hands' fingers joined together, slid forwards and reformed into two sharp blades. Pickaxes. That was the word she had been looking for.

She swung wildly at the wall again, being rewarded with Newton's Third Law throwing her back into the other wall for using a bad angle.

Ten more minutes of rubbing sore spots.

Peridot was at least happy that the trap was working great.

This time, the construction gem took a second to properly line up her angle, _then_ swung at the wall. With an almighty _Crrrr-RR-rrrOK!_ she cleaved the metal in two, getting her blade stuck in it.

At chest level.

And the metal behind what she had torn open went on forever.

Amblygonite reformed her pickaxes into hands, fuming quietly in defeat.

"Give up yet?" Peridot called down to her.

"Maybe!" Amblygonite replied. "My hands are getting really sore, isn't this thing trappy enough for you yet?"

"Well you HAVE been down there for an hour now! So, that's an affirmative."

"Aw jeez. How am I supposed to get out of here then!?"

"That's your job to figure out!"

Amblygonite kneaded her forehead. Peridot did have a point, she probably didn't deserve to get out of there unless she could figure it out for herself.

"Will you come get me if I can't get out in thirty minutes?" she asked.

"Suuuuuuuure," Peridot replied, with all the air of your best friend agreeing to help you move that king size bed down from the second floor of your house.

Amblygonite pursed her lips, trying to concentrate. After a while, she stood up and reformed her grappling hook, taking careful aim at the ledge high up above. The roof was too high up, but maybe if she could get the spear near the edge...

"Go go gadget grappling arm!" she called out, causing Peridot to become concerned that all those spills the other gem had taken were finally starting to affect her.

The spear shot out, climbing higher and higher, not quite reaching the ledge but managing to bury itself a few feet short of it.

Amblygonite then began the slow process of walking up the wall, spinning her pulley with her good hand. She had to wonder why she didn't think of this in the first place, and the answer is that it would have been too easy, so clearly she just wanted to challenge herself!

Ego soothed, she was soon at her spear. She looked up at Peridot, grinning sheepishly. There was no way she could actually reach the ledge from where she was, but...

Rolling her eyes, Peridot got down and stretched out her hand. Amblygonite stretched as far as she could, grasping onto Peridot's vastly more solid wrist, rather than her digits, and was shortly pulled back over the side.

"Okay," Amblygonite said, twisting her robotic wrist around after it reformed from its grappling position. "Never, ever, ask me to jump down pits for you again, please?" she said as nicely as possible.

"I'll consider it. Since it took you so long to get out, this only confirms that this is the _perfect_ trap!"

"Why? I still got out with the help of a friend. And those guys have 3 friends each!"

"Because I can activate the crushing mechanism while they're in there! It traps them from every side and will squeeze them until they're safely deformed!"

Amblygonite fell backwards onto the floor.

"So basically what I just did was entirely pointless," she said flatly.

"Er...Well...I guess in a sort of-" Peridot began, starting to feel more than a little foolish.

"That was a GREAT prank! Peridot you sly trickster you!" Amblygonite said, sitting back up and shooting her friend a big smile. "Wow, I really didn't see it coming! Giving me a pointless job, tsh. But you only get that one time, and only because I liked the challenge so much!"

"Uh- Yes! Yes! It was a great prank! Just keeping you on your toes, Assistant! You did very well in spite of that- Uh, _friend?_ " Peridot replied, the penny finally dropping from a minute previously.

"Yeah, friend! We're taking on the rebels, planning dastardly ambushes, fighting common foes, playing pranks on each other! That's friend stuff!"

"Huh. I guess so," Peridot ruminated. She didn't know how to feel about this 'friend' thing. It felt weird. And gross. But slightly not gross. A feeling that all people with friends can understand. "Wait? Each other?

"I'm still thinking of a good prank," Amblygonite said mischievously. "What's the next thing we do?"

"Er...I think most of the ship is fine now, we should try to go and check on the galaxy warp," Peridot said, sounding distracted. She started walking towards the exit, Amblygonite in tow.

"Hey Peridot?"

"Yes?"

"What's gonna happen when we get to Homeworld?"

"They'll send someone to clean up the mess of this planet after everything's over."

"Oh, good! Yeah, I saw these humans throwing garbage out of their boxes when I was on the road, it was really nasty."

The dramatic irony was thick enough to slice open with a saw blade.

 **A/N: Next chapter will take place during the events of "Friend Ship."**


	5. An Arm and a Leg

**A/N: Times I rewatched "Friend Ship"? Too many.**

Amblygonite and Peridot made it back to the galaxy warp without incident. It seems that despite being rather poor at her job, the Amblygonite had enough natural instinct left over to get the pad working. Although most pads generally don't hiss in the middle of teleporting. Amblygonite just shrugged it off and assured Peridot that it was definitely completely normal. Peridot reminded her that since she had no memory Amblygonite wouldn't know whether it was normal or not.

Amblygonite had to admit she had a point.

Now they were testing the various pads on the galaxy warp, trying to fix what Peridot assured Amblygonite was the pad heading back to Homeworld.

"But it just looks like a bunch of tiny rocks!" Amblygonite insisted, even as she hauled them across the small island they were on to the middle.

"Be that as it may, this is definitely the remains of the galaxy warp. These Crystal Gems are a menace, I can't believe they broke it _again..._ " complained Peridot. Even she was lending a hand this time around. It seemed like she had the actual diagram for how the warp should be constructed in her limb enhancers. At least that was what Amblygonite assumed she was looking at her fingers for. Her fingers could even move rocks around without requiring Peridot to lift them!

The lowly constructor was definitely jealous.

"They broke it before?"

"Affirmative. I repaired it, but it looks like they intended to keep it from being used permanently this time. That's why we had to use a ship to get here instead of a warp," she explained, shoving another rock onto the pile.

Amblygonite fretted over whether she actually _had_ enough sealant in her arms to pull the whole thing back together. From what Peridot had told her so far, the galaxy class warp pad had to be gigantic! Fixing a small one was no problem, but a funny feeling in the back of her head told her that this was slightly out of hear league.

As she stood there, locked by fear of not having enough glue, one of the warp pads glowed, drawing both gems' attention.

Four figures appeared on it. A tall, lanky Pearl, a tall, square haired Garnet, a short, big haired Amethyst, and a small, curly haired Steven.

"O-oh! Aha! Look! I was right!" the Pearl exclaimed, pointing at Peridot. Somehow Amblygonite escaped her notice. She felt mildly offended.

"My plan worked perfectly," crowed Pearl, clenching her fist while the Steven waved hello at the two Yellow Diamond Disciples (that was the name Amblygonite had insisted they give to themselves to combat the Crystal Gems).

"Good morning!" Steven said cheerfully.

"What!? How did you know we were here?" asked Peridot, looking simultaneously confused and panicked. Still no one had noticed Amblygonite. She wondered whether she was invisible or not.

"We found a _seeecret_ way to track you! And we'll never tell you how, even if you ask nicely! Nyeeeeh!" taunted Steven, pulling his eyelid low. Amblygonite was definitely offended now. Nobody pulled eyeballs at her and got away with it!

"Now hold on just a-" she began, raising her arm to call attention to herself.

"Peridot, we're here too-!" Garnet began, interrupting her.

"We won't let you get away with this!" cut across Pearl, continuing the interruption chain.

"Uh, hello!? I'm here to-" began Amblygonite, but Peridot's dulcet (read: nasally) tones interrupted her again. Her eye started twitching.

"Don't you Crystal Gems have anything better to do than annoy me?!" she cried.

"Nope, we're gonna-" began Amethyst, slamming a fist into her open palm, only to be interrupted by-

"Prepared to be annoyed!" annoyed Pearl.

"WILL YOU PLEASE STOP INTERRUPTING PEOPLE!?" shouted Amblygonite as she stomped her feet in anger. Everyone looked at her, seeming to finally realize she was there.

"U-Uh..." stuttered the construction gem, feeling the power of every gaze on her. "Cuz', you know, it's rude."

"Who on Earth is that?" Pearl asked.

"Whoever she is, she's with Peridot," Garnet answered, summoning two very threatening looking gauntlets onto her hands. Amblygonite swallowed.

"Good morning! What's your name?" Steven asked.

Peridot, meanwhile, was fuming quietly in the corner. You could almost see the steam coming from her mouth as she ground her teeth.

"Me?" Amblygonite asked, pointing one bronzed finger at herself. "I'm Amblygonite! Member of the Yellow Diamond Disciples! Peridot's told me all about you horrible rebels! You're going down! Like how my ship went down! Painfully and with lots of head injuries!" she said enthusiastically. Far, far too enthusiastically.

"Yellow Diamond Disciples?" snickered Amethyst.

"Hey! I liked the name!" Amblygonite said.

"We don't have time for this!" snapped Peridot, forming a cannon with her fingers and pointing it at the Crystal Gems. "This planet has an expiration date and I'm not gonna stick around to find out when!" she shouted, before apparently accidentally loosing a blast at the rebels.

The glowing green charge blew between the group, slamming into the pillar behind them and cracking it in half. The Steven quickly formed a large shield (Amblygonite whistled, impressed, until Peridot glared at her) to block it.

"That's it!" declared Pearl, rushing out from under the shield's protection and charging towards Peridot. "You're not going anywhe-!"

She found herself halted in place, frozen by Peridot's green matter transporter thingamajig.

"Sorry, but it looks like you're going in the wrong direction!" Peridot declared, spinning her around and around. "Assistant! Catch and release!" she yelled. It took Amblygonite a second to realize she was being addressed, so she barely had time to catch a surprised Pearl in her arms to continue the spin chain.

"Oh, uh, hi!" giggled Amblygonite as she used her arm's strength enhancing powers to spin Pearl even faster. Pearl looked, surprisingly, a little queasy now, and was unable to respond. Amblygonite shrugged, spinning on her heels and throwing Pearl hard in the direction of the other gems.

She slammed into Steven, and you could just barely hear the _splash_ as they both got knocked off the island. The Garnet used her massive fists to hold up the collapsed pillar now, directing Amethyst to attack Peridot.

The Amethyst surged forwards, rolling into a ball and charging at Peridot. Amblygonite threw herself in the way just as Peridot jumped out of the way. There should have been some seriously tearful music playing for such a stupid maneuver. Just pretend someone's playing on the world's tiniest violin.

Amblygonite and Amethyst collided, yelping and squeaking as they tumbled into the remains of another pillar and got stuck in the rocks within.

"Why yeS yellOW dIAMond I'd LOVE tO be proMOted..!" mumbled Amblygonite in a daze as she lay in the rubble left behind. Amethyst groaned nearby, irritably stuck in a small pile of the stuff.

"Assistant, you know where to go!" cried Peridot as she crawled upright on her...fingers!? Damn. Amblygonite HAD to get some of those things. Peridot crawled and jumped on top of a pad. Not a thing happened.

"Argh, doesn't anything on this planet _work!?_ " Cried Peridot.

A spate of coughing that sort of sounded like a feeble "I do!" came from Steven, who had managed to climb back onto the island. He was soaking wet and his hair looked a mess. He chucked a smaller shield at Peridot, beaning her on the nose.

"Hey! _Ow!"_ yelped Peridot, clutching her nose.

"Amethyst! Catch!" yelled Garnet as she threw the remains of the pillar high into the air. Amblygonite shook her head, clearing her thoughts in time to watch Amethyst conjure a whip, clearly intending to use it for the 'catch' thing that other gem was yelling about.

Amblygonite readied her favored saw blades, dashing forward and leaping into the air like a totally cool hero, just as Amethyst swung her whip forward and wrapped it around the pillar chunk. Amblygone swiped her hand forward and...

Fell flat on the ground. But at least her flailing sent a buzzing blade right through Amethyst's weapon, dropping the rock harmlessly on a different warp pad, destroying it.

"Thanks assistant!" called Peridot. Amblygonite gave her a thumbs up from the floor.

However, that still left a very irritated set of 4 gems to deal with, now that Pearl had also pulled herself out of the ocean, looking especially irritated now.

Peridot glanced between the 3 on one side of herself and Amethyst on the other, now looking angry about her destroyed whip and clearly intending to vent that anger on Amblygonite in a second. Thinking quickly, Peridot blasted another explosive shot at Garnet and Pearl, knocking them aside as she dashed for the warp pad they had been in front of. "Amblygonite! Move quickly!" she called, spurring the yellow gem into getting up and stumbling after her.

Amethyst, to her credit, jumped into another ball and spun after the retreating technician, but failed to account for Amblygonite tripping over her own feet and being sent sprawling off to the side. Amethyst soared right over where Amblygonite stood a second before, smacking into another pillar and demolishing it easily.

As the Gems recovered, Amblygonite quickly scuttled to the same warp pad as Peridot, collapsing on top of it and thanking every mineral in her body that somehow none of those scummy rebels had gotten their hands on her.

"Wow, this is just sad!" taunted Peridot, now confident that their escape was assured. "I almost feel sorry for you!"

Amblygonite stumbled to her feet, hand on her head as Peridot pulled her eyelid down, matching Steven's earlier taunt. Amblygonite waved goodbye to the Gems. "Yellow Disciples rule!" she yelled, just as the blue light of the warp activating yanked the Crystal Gems out of view.

They landed in a completely different area as opposed to the one near the crashed ship they had prepared. Amblygonite used the free time granted by this to rub her head as her scattered thoughts pulled themselves back together. She really had to stop getting knocked around this much.

"H-hey! We did it! We won!" Amblygonite cheered, looking up at Peridot. She didn't appear nearly as happy.

"So why are we here and not-"

"That Steven said they were tracking our movements," Peridot replied. Amblygonite frowned. This interrupting business had to be stopped, Maybe when they weren't in danger.

"So I'm giving them a few minutes to get back to whatever mechanism they use to track us, and _then_ we'll head to the ambush site."

"Did I do good?" Amblygonite asked, hoping for faint praise.

"You performed adequately, assisting in my escape and distracting their Amethyst. But I guess you've never actually been trained in combat either," she sniffed.

Amblygonite smiled. 'Adequate' was high praise! "If I have been, I certainly don't remember. So is the plan still the same? Lure them to the ship? We're gonna have to leave a trail."

"No need, I noted a closer warp pad next to the ship when I first found it. I let you fix the other warp pad so you could improve yourself."

"Uh. Thanks?" Amblygonite said, not sure whether to feel insulted or grateful for the extra training.

"Right. Okay, this should have been long enough," Peridot said, and the blue light encompassed them again.

Amblygonite stumbled off the pad as Peridot rushed towards the ship. The yellow gem hastened to follow her. They had gone over a plan when they went to the galaxy warp. Peridot would man the control room and keep in contact with Amblygonite through various intercoms throughout the ship, Amblygonite was supposed to keep the Gems stuck in whatever traps they got trapped in. Given that she alone wouldn't stand a chance against the gems, Peridot had been generous enough to allow her to retreat if they tried to attack her.

Amblygonite entered the ship, just as Peridot's face appeared on the holo screen.

"Do you still remember the plan?" she said, now appearing rather frightened since the Gems were most likely chasing them.

"I got most of it still in my head, don't worry," Amblygonite said confidently. "How are you doing? You looked worried. Keep your head in the game, Peri! Confidence!"

"Don't worry about me!" snapped Peridot. Amblygonite shrugged it off, taking out her grappling spear again and climbing up to the ceiling to hide.

"Relax, Peridot, we got this. They're obviously running out of steam with how badly we beat them!" she said reassuringly.

Peridot looked almost mollified, until they heard footsteps approaching. The screen quickly shut off. They had to maintain the element of surprise, after all. Amblygonite swung lightly in the air high above the group of Crystal Gems as they entered. As soon as they had all entered the ship, the screen flickered back to life as Peridot began to taunt them.

Amblygonite zoned out for most of it, it was really very boring. When she heard the hum of the cannon next to her powering up, however, she hastily dug her spare hand's fingers into the ceiling to ensure she didn't get fricasseed. What she hadn't counted on was their Steven reacting fast enough that he could throw up a shield that _deflected_ the shots rather than absorbing them.

"Eeep! Yikes!" squeaked Amblygonite as she performed mid-air pirouettes in order to dodge the lasers bouncing around her. She was at least 20% sure her hair would have a smoking hole through it by the end of this, but in the meantime she tried to focus her bouncing eyes on the group of Gems retreating below. They disappeared down the hallway leading to the disposal area.

Amblygonite hastily released the lock on her pulley mechanism, rapidly descending to the floor and reforming her arm as a laser bounced off the floor next to her. Yelping and hissing, she danced between the few laser shots still bouncing between the metal plates in the main room and dodged down the hallway, following the Crystal Gems.

She could hear yelling up ahead, presumably they had run into the distraction Peridot had arranged. At least she didn't have to deal with the spike traps that Peridot had discovered in the hallway. She sprinted along the corridor, coming into view of the Crystal Gems just as they fell down into the trap Amblygonite herself had fallen in earlier. Jeez. Gems sure built their ships in the most bizarre way possible.

She bent over and watched as the gems fell down into the pit below, until the smallest one used her whip to rescue herself and the Steven, anyway. Amblygonite frowned, watching them land on top of the now closed pit, then jumped up and pressed down on a nearby intercom that was partially hidden by an overgrown vine.

"Hey, uh, Peri?" she asked. "Your trap sort of worked!"

"Excellent! Wait. What do you mean 'sort of'?" crackled Peridot's voice. It sounded even more high pitched and annoying than usual thanks to the aging system trying to transmit her voice.

"Well the small ones managed to get out of it, uh...Hold on, they're talking..." She dashed off to check down below again. What on Homeworld were these guys talking about? Something something...apologies for something...no you can't apologize for that...

Amblygonite dashed back to the intercom.

"Yeah, they're just having a moment in the pit thingy. I think they're working their problems out or something?" Amblygonite said, for once feeling like she wasn't the only confused one in the building.

"Uh..." Peridot droned over the intercom. "Okay. I'll just...Do this! Make sure it doesn't get stopped!"

"Make sure what-Woah!" Amblygonite started, then stumbled as she felt the gears down below start to rumble. Presumably that was the crushing mechanism in action. In _theory_ it would only dematerialize the Gems' physical forms and keep the allotted space small enough that they'd be trapped forever.

In theory. That's what Peridot told her anyway.

Amblygonite cocked her head, listening in as Pearl lamented how useless she was and how she had needed so badly to fuse with Garnet. The yellow skinned gem frowned. This was almost tugging at her heart strings. But, these were cold blooded rebels! They were probably just putting on an act. She stumbled again as she suddenly felt the gears stop moving.

"Amblygonite!" Peridot yelled from the intercom. "Something's stopped the crusher! Figure out what it is and fix it! That's an order!"

"On it boss!" called Amblygonite, forming a pick axe with one hand and jumping into the funnel. She jammed her hand against one side of the wall, slowing her descent slightly as she slid down towards the now closed off pit. The grinding of metal was horrendous enough to make her wince and wish she could choose to just stop hearing things for a while, as well as wishing she'd picked a less obvious method of making her entry. She'd never be cool and sneak up on the two down there now!

She fell to the floor, quickly jumping back and forming her favorite weapon: Saw blades.

"Alright Crystal Clods! No more Miss Nice Gem!" Amblygonite taunted, facing the Steven and Amethyst who appeared to be busy holding the gears still with that infernal whip of theirs.

"What the-!?" gasped Amethyst, turning her head to look at Amblygonite. "Oh not now! Can't you like, go bother Peridot instead or something!?"

"She complains when I do that!" Amblygonite said, advancing towards the pair with as much 'menace' as she could muster. Since they were stuck standing still, it'd be a simple matter to cut that whip in half while they were forced to watch.

"Stop! Y-You don't have to do this!" the Steven yelled at her, his panicked gaze flicking between the pit and the screen showing just how close to being crushed Garnet and Pearl were.

"I don't have a choice!" yelled Amblygonite dramatically (If she didn't attack them she'd _really_ get an earful from Peridot after all) as she finally jumped into action.

She surged past the pair, slicing downwards at the whip with one of her spinning hands, cutting the rope cleanly in half and letting the gears resume their grisly work.

"Haha! Feel the wrath of Amblygonite!" cheered the technician as she immediately advanced towards the pair, slashing with her hands wildly and inaccurately, even stumbling a few times for good measure. Turns out, construction workers aren't very good at fighting smart.

Amethyst jumped back from the razor sharp blades spinning towards her while Steven summoned another shield, causing Amblygonite's blades to bounce back at first, making her stumble backwards again. Steven stuck his tongue out at her. The nerve!

"Arrrrgh! Enough with the shields!" shouted the frustrated gem, reforming her hands and wiggling all of her digits until they formed into drills. "I'm so tired of shields today! Just surrender so we can bring you to justice!"

She jammed all her fingers against Steven's shield, drills grinding furiously against the bright pink light. Amblygonite laughed when she saw Amethyst trying to find a good angle for her fresh whip to get around with, and failing miserably. Steven's shield was taking up too much room! And Amblygonite could already see cracks starting to form on the 'weapon,' while beads of sweat popped up on Steven's forehead. Any second now-

There was a furious grinding noise below their feet.

Amblygonite glanced down, then screamed and jumped backwards off the trap door.

A huge drill, much more powerful than her tiny finger drills, bored through the mechanism and preceded a giant red skinned gem out of the trap. She stood on top of the trap door's sides, then was swallowed by a bright light. Garnet and Pearl stepped out of it, glaring daggers at Amblygonite.

To her credit, she tried to parlay.

"Oh. You uh. Got...Free," she said meekly, pulling one hand behind her back as discreetly as possible. They were already advancing on her, not looking too happy.

"You're coming with us. I _suggest_ you come quietly," said Garnet. Her tone was calm, but it radiated threat like how an angry tiger seems to scream 'I will kill you' with its mere presence.

"See, now, if I do that, then I'll fail my friend!" Amblygonite protested. "Oh my god! Look! I told Peridot not to use _that!_ " she suddenly said, pointing her spare hand at the back of the room.

Steven and Amethyst looked. Two out of four wasn't bad, right?

Amblygonite shrugged and discharged explosive gel at the wall behind herself, counted to five, then turned and ran.

The huge explosion rocked the ship to its core, causing the unprepared Gems to stumble as Amblygonite sprinted through the new hole in the wall. She had to get to the control room and warn Peridot! She may or may not have completely forgotten about the other intercoms on the ship.

"PeeeeerIIIIIDOOOOOOOT!" she yelled, running faster than she ever had in her life. Which was pretty short considering her memory only extended back a few days at this point. Still, she ran pretty fast! She could hear yelling in the distance behind her, and she didn't fancy trying to fight all 4 gems at the same time considering one of them had managed to stop her by _standing there._

As she ran along the corridors of the ship she slapped at buttons along the way, activating a myriad of traps in an effort to delay the Crystal Gems. One corridor began to spew flames behind her back, another opened a fresh trap door that led to an entirely drained tank with tiny fish skeletons. In hindsight, Amblygonite had to admit they should have spent more time prepping their backup plan. This was reinforced when she looked behind herself and saw Steven leading the way through the fire with that infernal shield of his. "Don't you clods ever get tired!?" she yelled, exasperated.

"You're only making this harder on yourself!" Amethyst yelled, cracking her whip just above Amblygonite, who ducked in time to avoid getting caught in its grasp.

"Can't we just talk this out!?" Amblygonite shouted, looking forward in time to avoid slamming into a fallen support strut.

"We would if you-" Steven gasped for a second, straining due to the amount of energy he had blown through during the day. "-If you stopped for a second!"

"No thanks! I don't wanna get killed!" Amblygonite replied, redoubling her efforts and rounding a corner, dodging into an open door and slamming her palm on the 'close' button. It shuddered closed and she listened carefully for the sound of her pursuer's footsteps. They became louder, and louder, making Amblygonite start to panic since they were clearly just outside the door, then started fading away.

"Wheeeeeew," she breathed, sliding down the door and onto the floor as the Gems ran off in the wrong direction.

She looked up, seeing Peridot staring at her aghast.

"Did they break free?" she whispered quietly, sounding more scared than angry. A good omen for Amblygonite's feelings.

The assistant nodded her head. "I tried to stop them, but then a really big gem drilled out of the hole! They fused again!" she answered, then quickly looked around as if that large gem would suddenly appear again, drilling through the thin walls surrounding the command center.

"Not another of those accursed fusion!" groaned Peridot, dragging a 'hand' across her face. "Well, there was nothing you could do anyway if that's the case. Let me see if I can find them on one of the cameras..." she began, turning back to the console and trying different buttons.

This old Gem tech was clearly not playing nice with her, however. Several screens hissed and crackled, some of the buttons shorted out as soon as they were pressed.

Amblygonite ambled over to try and assist her leader, not that she was at all familiar with _any_ level of gem technology. She was faintly concerned that her memories still hadn't returned, but she crammed those feelings down like one would cram a failed test into the bottom of a backpack.

"What do we do if they find us in here?" Amblygonite asked, trying a few buttons and wincing when a screen split open and issued sparks. She bent under the console and checked around for a panel to dislodge. Maybe if she could redirect the flow of power, fewer of these things would overload...

"I'll shoot a hole in the ceiling," Peridot said. "We can escape through there if they somehow find us in this labyrinth."

Amblygonite pulled herself backwards and looked up. She saw cold metal. But in theory, the same fireball Peridot launched earlier could also destroy the plating there too. In theory. Amblygonite was trusting Peridot an awful lot lately.

"Good plan, Peri," Amblygonite said, heading back to searching for a spot to start working on.

"I'm a Peridot, we always come up with good plans," she answered cheerfully, seemingly braced by at least having someone else around for the Crystal Gems to pound upon.

So when the rear wall suddenly shattered explosively, both were comforted by that same fact as they saw the Crystal Gems pour forth into their last bastion of safety.

"Surrender Peridot, Amblygonite! You have no where to run!" challenged Garnet, managing to look peeved through her glasses somehow. Maybe Amblygonite shouldn't have led her on such an annoying chase...

"The Crystal Gems are gonna get youuuu!" added Steven, jeeringly.

"You think this is the end?" Peridot said, arming her cannon and pointing it at the Gems. Amblygonite followed her example and armed her grappling hook, deciding not to inform the Gems it was a pretty useless slow firing weapon.

"This is only the beginning!" Amblygonite added, glancing at Peridot, who nodded back at her,

"Of _our_ _escape!"_ yelled Peridot, blasting a massive hole in the ceiling.

Amblygonite fired off a hook into the edge of the ceiling, not wasting any time in starting to rapidly wheel herself upwards. She really, really wished this stupid pulley could be automated, but apparently she didn't rank high enough for that sort of upgrade.

"I'd love to stick around and watch another of your pathetic attempts to capture," taunted Peridot as she began to hover up into the air, "But I guess I'm just too smart for the likes of you lumpy clumpy _clods!"_ She laughed, certain there was no way someone would think to grab her as she slowly rose into the air.

Steven jumped up...

And grabbed Amblygonite's leg. Amblygonite shouted, trying to shake and kick Steven off of herself while still wheeling herself higher.

"Hey! Leggo my leggo!" she yelled rapidly, squirming as she felt the odd fleshy creature's digits pushing against her skin.

"I caught an Amblo...Ambly...What was your name?" he tried, sounding out the unfamiliar name.

Amethyst, Pearl, and Garnet added to the growing chain dragging Amblygonite back down to Earth, making the yellow gem start to panic.

"Get those things off me! This ain't funny, eugh, your digits feel so gross!" she whined, feeling her spear start to groan from all the weight being put on it. Any second now it would snap free of its mooring!

"Amblygonite," shouted Garnet, "Your hike's been postponed!"

Amblygonite would have laughed if she wasn't certain they'd shatter her if she got pulled back down there.

"Peridot! HELP NOW PLEASE!" she shouted pleadingly at the green gem, who had made it to the ledge safely and was watching the incident with some amusement.

"Uh, right! Hold on Amblygonite!" she said, performing a quasi-good act for once in her life. She quickly charged her cannon and loosed a round at the congregation gathered below. Perhaps, maybe a too powerful fireball. She also should have spent longer actually aiming it. Remember kids, hip firing only works in movies. In real life it just results in shooting your friends. The command center erupted in an explosion as the gems dodged out of the way, while Amblygonite found herself launched into the air.

"I got you, I got you!" yelled Peridot, catching the other gem and staggering under her weight. "Uh. Whoops."

Amblygonite blinked, then pulled herself out of Peridot's grasp and glanced down at an oddly cool feeling part of her body.

A regular yellow arm, somewhat shorter and far less powerful looking than her usual metal arm, looked back at her. As much as an arm can look. Amblygonite wiggled her fingers. They failed to turn into drills. She gratefully scratched her head risk free.

"Your limb enha-" Peridot began, but Amblygonite shook her head.

"We gotta go! They're gonna shatter us!" she shouted. Peridot nodded and took off into the air, the now one enhanced arm Amblygonite sprinting along under her.

In the command center of the gem ship, Steven marveled at the captured limb enhancer, still reverting from grappling form, while the other Gems proudly and confidently assured each other they'd catch the terrible duo next time.


	6. The One Armed Bandits

The two Homeworld Gems managed to escape detection and pursuit by the Crystal Gems. They fled deep into the surrounding forest, only stopping once Amblygonite ran out of breath. Peridot landed next to her, watching as the now halfway enhanced Gem braced her right augmented arm against a tree while catching her breath.

Amblygonite's left arm was now without any sort of upgrades, that much was clear. It looked just a little bit too short for how 'tall' the gem herself was. It was obvious that she was an error gem, a product of Homeworld's inattention in regards to its consumption of materials. Peridot snorted derisively.

Amblygonite looked up at her, brushing her own hair out of her eyes with her normal hand, jumping slightly at the odd feeling of skin to skin contact for once.

"What's...Up...Peri?" she asked after a moment, managing to catch her breath. She was pretty sure she was never, ever meant to run this much. This was definitely more exercise than she signed up for when she probably volunteered for this mission. Her memories refused to surface still, much to her frustration.

"The sky," Peridot said flatly.

Amblygonite smiled, though it was clear Peridot hadn't intentionally made the joke.

"I...meant, what are you looking at me for?" Amblygonite clarified, straightening up to return the look the green gem was giving her.

"No reason beyond assuring that you're still functional," Peridot answered a little hastily. "How, uh, does your arm feel?"

Amblygonite glanced down at her bare arm, flexing it experimentally. It felt rather flimsy in comparison to the awesome mecha arms she had started with, truthfully. At least she still _had_ an arm though, she'd really be up the creek if she had only one arm! But grievous injuries like that just didn't happen, obviously. Death? Yes. Permanent limb loss? Never.

"It feels strange," she answered after a moment. "I still don't remember anything from before I got here. I'm pretty sure that's not a good thing." She frowned, then smiled again as she crammed her feelings down inside again. "But that's okay, I'm sure the new ones I've made are just as good!"

"But my point was," she added, "That I guess it feels strange since I probably didn't wear these arm things all the time on Homeworld. Also it feels good that I can actually use my fingers without some bizarre tool jumping out of my pinkie or something. I can scratch my back now!" She excitedly stretched a hand behind herself and gave her back a good scratching.

"You're...really taking this in stride," Peridot said, not quite sure how to respond to her assistant's determination to remain in high spirits.

"I'm sure we'll get it back eventually. Or we'll get to Homeworld and they'll make me a new one!" Amblygonite said resolutely. "What should our plan be now, Peri? I thought the Galaxy Warp would have been our best shot..."

"I just need to think for a while," Peridot said, failing to keep an edge of panic out of her voice.

Amblygonite shrugged, sitting down on the ground and drawing her legs up to her chest. "That's cool, we've got time," Amblygonite said, marveling at the feeling of dirt between her regular fingers.

However, her efforts at reassurance seemed to have the opposite effect in Peridot. At the word "time" she twitched violently while her pupils contracted. "Time. Time. Yes, of course, time. We've definitely got time. All the time in this world! Ha ha!" she laughed, slightly madly.

Amblygonite pursed her lips, watching her leader descend into the level of madness that usually only Amblygonite herself occupied. And the constructor gem wasn't there by choice!

"You feelin' alright there leader?" she asked, quirking her head slightly.

"Me?!" Peridot asked, glancing down at the other gem. "I'm perfectly fine! Everything is fine! We've got all the time in _this_ world!" She laughed again, clearly still teetering around the edge of absolute panic.

"You keep saying that like it's supposed to be a joke but I'm really not following," Amblygonite replied, now drawing doodles in the dirt with one finger. "Is this place like, due for something? Like removal for construction of a hyperspace bypass?"

Peridot half started to laugh, then looked down at Amblygonite, dumbstruck once more by the weird sentences crawling from her mouth. "A _what?"_

"I dunno. Just seems like a space thing."

"Well this planet isn't going to be destroyed for one of those!" snapped Peridot.

"So it's gonna be destroyed for something else?"

"I-!" Peridot started, freezing mid-sentence. Then she sighed, taking a few deep breaths to get her pulse back to normal levels. "We should find proper cover. Then I can try to think of a new plan."

Amblygonite watched the other gem curiously, noting the dodged question but not quite saying anything yet. "What's 'proper cover'?"

"Anywhere that isn't here and can't be seen from the air."

"So, like a cave?"

"I...Guess."

Amblygonite wordlessly pointed to one just behind Peridot. Said gem turned around and looked at the cave sheepishly.

"...Okay, good work then assistant," she said after a moment, stalking off towards the cave.

Amblygonite hastened to follow her, falling on her face when she tried to use her left arm for support instead of her enhanced one. She used her bad arm to wipe dirt from her visor as she lurched back onto her feet, chasing after her superior as Peridot ducked into the cave.

When Amblygonite caught up with her, Peridot was busy rapidly reading through something in her own logs, painfully reminding Amblygonite that her own were long since totally destroyed. Damn. She hadn't looked through her PDA for any games before it had gotten broken, which was her biggest regret so far.

"Whatcha readin'?" Amblygonite asked as she walked around the cave, examining the intricate rocks and the various disgusting bugs that crawled all over everything.

"Research data on this planet. Gems have been working on it for years," Peridot explained quickly. She seemed to be frantically searching through her files, and when Amblygonite glanced over her shoulder she could see that Peridot was mostly looking for any other possible Galaxy Warps off the planet.

"What exactly did we do here then?" Amblygonite pressed, shrugging and bending down to let a worm crawl onto her bare finger. She shivered slightly at the sensation of it crawling across her skin.

"We were using it to create more gems and colonize it! It would have been perfect!" Peridot answered testily.

"Were you there for it?"

"Unfortunately, no," Peridot said. "I've only read up on the data from back then."

"Oh. So what else have you done since then?"

"I've created many successful Kindergartens on different planets. I'm a fully certified Kindergartner!"

"What's a Kindergarten?"

"It's where we create more gems, like you. You were probably incorrectly created by some amateur doing a rush job," Peridot answered dismissively, making Amblygonite wince.

"Well _I_ think I turned out pretty alright," she grumbled, brushing her hair out off her visor.

"If you were properly created, you would not have to use those limb enhancers," Peridot pointed out. "You're inherently flawed. It's just the facts."

"You don't need to be so _mean_ about it though!" Amblygonite shot back.

"Don't talk to me like that!" retorted Peridot. "You're a lowly Amblygonite, you're forgetting your place!"

Amblygonite's lip curled and her metal hand curled into a fist for a second, until she took one or two deep breaths, counting slowly to ten. "Okay, okay, we've just had a bit of a setback, we're both a little steamed. Sorry for talking back," Amblygonite said, folding her arms and leaning against the wall of the cave.

"That's better," said Peridot simply.

Amblygonite waited a few minutes patiently, then rolled her eyes as the silence stretched between the two of them. How does someone with amnesia have better social skills than a regular member of society?

"...So what else do you do besides being a Kindergartner?" she broached.

"Huh?" Peridot asked, confused. "What else is there to do? I'm a Peridot, this is what I do."

"Yeah but surely you've got like...what's the word? There's things to do besides your job?" Amblygonite asked, sounding confused.

"There's only one thing _to_ do, and that's to fulfill my purpose. Oh! And survive. I also try to survive," Peridot answered.

Amblygonite reached under her visor to rub at her eyes, suddenly feeling very tired.

"So what's my "purpose" then?" she asked.

"You assist primary technicians such as myself with whatever we tell you to do. You also perform basic construction, demolition, and repair under the charge of professional Bismuths."

"That sounds so _boring_ though," the constructor complained, sliding onto the floor.

"You can complain all you want, but that doesn't change what your purpose is. You were made and enhanced to do your job, so you'll do it."

"Is that what Homeworld's like?"

"Yes," Peridot answered, closing her log and looking down at Amblygonite. There was curiosity in her eyes.

"Is that going to be a problem?" Peridot added.

Amblygonite looked back up at her, considering her answer. "Yeah," she answered honestly. "But I guess its better than getting stuck here and shattered or whatever by these Crystal Gems. Plus they sent me here, maybe they'll send me on another mission like this!"

"That's the spirit," Peridot said, pointing one finger up in the air and charging it up so that a greenish light filled the cave as the sun began to set.

Amblygonite looked around, the new light illuminating the rear of the cave to show a quickly retreating nest of various bugs. Gross. At least this place wasn't inhabited by anything that could actually threaten the pair of them.

"So do you have a plan yet?" Amblygonite asked, dismissing thoughts of creepy crawlies and trying to focus on leaving the planet with people trying to kill them.

"It's simple. We need to kidnap the Steven and use him to find whatever secret way the Crystal Clods have for escaping this planet. Or just as a bargaining chip."

"You want us to _take_ one of the Crystal Gems and hope they have a way to get off this rock?" Amblygonite asked, very confused. "What if he doesn't know?"

"He'll know! He has to! We can't afford to wait forever and the Galaxy Warp is the only way I've been able to find that would let us leave!"

"And we can't just warp back to it because we'd be tracked again," Amblygonite finished for Peridot, closing her eyes in exhaustion.

"Correct. So we're going to walk to their headquarters and take a hostage!" Peridot exclaimed.

"How far is it?"

"...Pretty far."

Amblygonite stood up and stretched, faltering when her left arm didn't even come close to reaching her right hand while doing so. She sighed, missing her other arm greatly.

"Okay," she said. "Guess that means we should get going."

"In the middle of the night?" Peridot asked, slightly surprised.

"Yeah, I mean, we'll need to get there sooner rather than later. Then wait until night time so we can grab this Steven quietly."

"Good point, follow me," Peridot said, leading the way out of the cave and into the forest nearby. Amblygonite followed after her, lamenting that she could not speedily destroy roads like she used to.

* * *

They had marched in silence for some time, Peridot refusing to ever stop despite the night's darkness closing in on them. Spooky animal noises and creepy bugs flitting around her face made Amblygonite definitely want to stop for the night, but Peridot seemed more determined than ever to escape the planet once and for all.

"Hey, Peridot?" Amblygonite asked, the moon glaring down at them to provide scant illumination.

"Yes?" she answered icily, not missing a step.

"Why are you in such a rush to leave anyway? I mean, besides the fact that there are people here trying to kill us."

"You say that like we shouldn't be in a rush to get back to Homeworld," Peridot said, turning to glance at the other gem skeptically.

"I mean, we should be! But, I guess my point is that there's no need to wander around in the darkness! I think I've seen that same thingy at least five times now!" Amblygonite pointed out, indicating a tree with a gnarled mass of roots towards its bottom. On its trunk was scribbled a weird icon with two letters inside it, an addition symbol between them.

"How can you tell?"

"Because that weird...thing has a weird thing on its middle!" Amblygonite insisted. Peridot stared at the tree in turn, pursing her lips.

"You must have somehow been leading us in circles," Peridot immediately blamed, albeit talking to herself.

Amblygonite had the good grace to simply roll her eyes understandingly.

"I think it's the darkness," said the construction gem. "Unless we have better light than the...big...gray...thing in the sky, we're just gonna keep wandering like this."

"How would _you_ know?"

"Because when I was trying to find you I did the same thing," she freely admitted. "That's why I couldn't find my pod after I crashed here."

Peridot considered this, finally stopping beside the tree mentioned earlier. Amblygonite gratefully took the chance to kick over some rocks by the side of the same tree. It was a good break from walking endlessly.

"Okay. You might have a point," Peridot finally admitted.

"I try. Should we stop here until there's light enou-"

"I wasn't done!" Peridot interrupted. "I think we should stop until there's light enough to see by."

Amblygonite waited a full five minutes before continuing on. "Great plan, Peri," she sighed, taking a seat and pressing her hand against the side of the tree, experimenting with how much force it took to strip the bark off.

"Yes, I did make it myself," Peridot said proudly. She circled the area, checking behind rocks for...something. Maybe she'd been ambushed before? Amblygonite didn't care to think much about that at the moment. An inch worm crawled onto one of Amblygonite's fingers, making her shiver at the slight feeling before she brought it closer to one of her eyes to inspect.

"Peridot, have you _seen_ these weird little creatures before?" Amblygonite said, walking over to the other gem and presenting the tiny worm as it searched desperately for a way off this crazy thing.

"No. Why should I? Does it serve as some sort of weapon?" she asked, squinting at the tiny creature.

"I don't think so. But it looks adorable!" Amblygonite answered. "I think it likes you!" she added with a smirk when the inch worm crawled onto Peridot's visor and began to head for her hair.

"GAH! GET IT OFF! IT'S **ATTACKING ME!** " she yelled, rubbing it wildly off her visor in a panic, dancing around the area serving as their campsite.

Amblygonite laughed at the sight, but all too soon it was over and Peridot was hardly amused.

"I'll ask you _politely_ to not do that again," she said, trying to maintain what little dignity she had left. The inch worm was now long gone, but it was doubtless going to require years before Peridot's dignity could be recovered completely.

"I'll be sure to not threaten you with tiny flobbery crawlers in the future," Amblygonite said, barely holding back a snort. "What should we do to kill time until daylight?" she added.

Peridot huffed. "I don't know."

"Well what do you usually do?"

"I fly above the trees at night so I can ensure I'm not walking in circles!" Peridot said, not hiding her irritation at being grounded. There was no way Amblygonite could follow her from the ground in this darkness.

"Fair enough," Amblygonite shrugged. "But we can't just stand here for hours until the sun rises."

"Why not?"

"Because that's really boring?"

"Well maybe we can figure out a way to keep from walking in circles instead!"

"You're the Peridot here, you're supposed to be the smart one!" Amblygonite said by way of slightly backhanded compliment.

"That is true, I _am_ the smart one here," she replied, dodging (unintentionally) the implied insult flung her way. Amblygonite would get her one day.

"Okay," she said. Then she charged her cannon and blew up the tree they had been circling. Amblygonite fell over, spitting out blades of grass and vowing to one day keep her mouth shut when falling over.

The tree itself groaned heavily, falling over backwards as its charred roots gave way to the heavy weight on top of them. It hit the ground with an almighty crash, sending several birds into the sky.

Amblygonite was uncomfortably reminded of her own crash landing.

"What'd you do that for!?" she asked, standing up and brushing herself off and only missing with her regular arm once.

"To mark where we've been!" Peridot said smartly. "We won't circle this tree anymore!"

Amblygonite had to admit she had a point.

"Okay, but what if we end up circling another tree?"

"Simple, we need to keep going in a single direction. No more turning around! I definitely know where I'm going!"

"Are you sure?"

"I'm a Peridot, of course I'm sure."

Amblygonite shrugged. She followed behind Peridot as the latter steadfastly refused to ever turn around. For her part, Amblygonite tried to make sure they weren't somehow circling around any more trees.

Whenever they did happen to end up circling something, Amblygonite pointed it out and Peridot rocked the forest with another blast. If someone asked for Amblygonite's opinion, she'd say Peridot was definitely getting more unhinged as time passed. What was it that was scaring her so much? The thought of being shattered certainly frightened Amblygonite, but not as much as it did to Peridot it seemed.

* * *

When dawn came, the duo had managed to escape the forest at last, coming upon a road that Peridot assured Amblygonite led straight to the town next to their target. The road just reminded Amblygonite she couldn't roller blade anymore, but for old time's sake she whipped her remaining arm against it, laughing at the sparks jumping off the asphalt, even as Peridot reprimanded her for wasting time.

So on they marched. Peridot really wasn't much of a talker, it seemed. Amblygonite tried to ask what was scaring her so much, but she was very tight lipped about it. In fact, asking about it seemed to upset her even more. After a few more hours of walking the pair came upon a small town. A sign on the road approaching it said...Something. Amblygonite realized she couldn't read whatever this planet's primary language was.

"Hey Peridot?"

"What?"

"What's that sign say?" Amblygonite asked, pointing towards the sign. It had a picture of some happy humans waving on it next to some big looking words.

"Hmm..." Peridot responded, forming a square with her digits. The square expanded out, until they formed a perimeter around the sign. A green screen flickered between the digits, then a line buzzed down it. As the line crossed over the strange letters, they reformed into Gemscript.

The sign now very obviously read: "Welcome to Backwater Village! Pop: 501!"

The 1 appeared to be hastily painted over a 0.

"I wish my touch stumps could do that," Amblygonite said wistfully as Peridot's digits returned to her arm and the sign returned to normal.

"That's a shame then, because these enhancements are for Peridots only," Peridot answered smugly.

"Your limbs are enhanced too!? Not all Peridots are like that!?" gasped Amblygonite in amazement. Peridot realized the grave error she had made and hastily strode forward into the town before Amblygonite could barrage her with more questions.

The pair walked through the small town, almost immediately getting looks for their strange appearance. Small towns never really did appreciate outsiders, no matter what their happy welcome signs said.

"Peridooooot," hissed Amblygonite. "The humans are _staring_ at us!"

"Just ignore the simple creatures. Even _you_ could handle them easily if they tried to stop us," Peridot said calmly as they walked down main street. Amblygonite couldn't ignore them however.

The diversity among the creatures was simply amazing! Some of them were tall, some were short. Even more were really short, looking like miniature versions of the humans they stood beside. Some were small enough that they had to be carried. It was starting to feel like every eye in town was watching them after a few minutes. This couldn't possibly be true, instead it was merely 154 eyes watching them.

But neither gem was aware of that.

"Hey look!" Amblygonite shouted suddenly, pointing excitedly forwards. Next to a small brick building was another of those strange boxes that the humans rode in. It looked slightly different in that the back part of it was open to the air, with the front being the only enclosed space.

"What is it?" Peridot asked, glancing from the vehicle to Amblygonite.

"It's the same kind of thing that the humans use to get around! We could go really fast if we took it with us!"

"Hm. Let's see," Peridot 'agreed' and walked towards the truck. She grasped the door handle gently and tugged. It was locked. Peridot shrugged, turning to look at Amblygonite.

"Open it," she ordered.

Amblygonite walked up to the truck window and smashed it open with her metal fist. The truck immediately started blaring an annoying alarm while Amblygonite spent a minute figuring out how to unlock the door.

"HEY!" shouted a new voice. It sounded uncomfortably deep. The gems looked over at its source, a very large man wearing a muddy yellow overcoat. He was advancing towards them, very clearly irritated at their exploration. "JUST WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOIN' TO MY TRUCK!?" he yelled, waving a dinner plate sized fist in the air.

"Uh, Peri? Maybe we should get going?" squeaked Amblygonite, hiding behind the green gem. Regardless of her ability to regenerate, she wasn't keen to try and fight someone who looked quite capable of simply _eating_ her.

"G-good plan!" Peridot said, jumping into the truck and slamming the door closed. Amblygonite jumped into the bed of the truck and peered over the side. The large yelling man had now broken into a run at the sight of the gems entering his vehicle. Fortunately, he was also very slow at running.

"Peridot! Why aren't we going!?"

"I'm checking how this machine is supposed to start!" yelled Peridot. Amblygonite watched her fiddle with a weird wheel pointlessly and press a few of the pedals uselessly.

"Isn't there a turn on button in there?!"

"Er..." Peridot hummed. She looked around the front of the vehicle, spotting an odd slot in the side of the column supporting the wheel. There was no way her digits could fit in there, though!

"Any day now Peridot!" Amblygonite yelped. The man was getting close enough that she could see the anger in his eyes. And also the vein pulsing in his temple.

Peridot searched frantically around the truck, flipping over an odd visor on the roof of the car.

"A key?" she asked, as a black key tumbled into her hand. Did the human leave it in here after locking his car? But then how would he get back in?

"PERIDOT!"

Peridot abandoned that line of thinking and stuffed the key into the slot, twisting it. The engine growled as the truck came to life. Lights lit up across the dashboard.

"GET OUT OF MY TRUCK!" roared the man, who had managed to catch up to the truck now and was reaching through the window.

"Get away! Get away!" spat Amblygonite, swatting pointlessly at his head with her normal arm and forgetting her far more useful metal arm.

Peridot recoiled violently from the man's arm, knocking the gear shift backwards just as one of her feet scraped against a pedal.

The truck roared, rolling backwards quickly and knocking the man back and onto the ground. He just narrowly avoided getting his arm crushed under one of the tires.

"KEEP GOING!" Amblygonite insisted as she saw other town members coming out of their hiding spaces and advancing towards them. They all looked horribly irritated at having this loud ruckus in their village.

Peridot, not really understanding the finer nuances of driving, twisted the wheel around and rapidly drove the truck backwards out of the town. "Do humans really drive like this!?" she yelled.

Amblygonite shrugged, the wind whipping at her head.

"I think they're usually facing the other way! Maybe this box is different?" she answered after thinking for a bit.

"Just keep us on the road then assistant! I'll keep this machine moving!"

"You got it!" Amblygonite said, turning to look at the road. She called out directions, and after a few mishaps that involved going off road, Peridot figured out that turning left with her steering wheel moved the vehicle in the opposite direction.

"Uh, Peridot?" Amblygonite said when she heard a weird whining noise coming from 'behind' them.

"What is it?"

"I think the humans are mad at us!"

Peridot looked up and out the front windshield.

Another car with red/blue lights on top and a siren was chasing the truck down. Someone's voice started shouting from the car too.

"Pull your vehicle over immediately! This is the police!"

"The police!?" yelled Amblygonite. "Who are the police?"

"I don't know! But we don't have time for this! Hang on!"

Amblygonite made a crab claw motion with metal hand, forming a clamp that she hastily attached to the side of the truck. Just in time too: Peridot's foot slammed down on the gas pedal, making the engine whine as moved slightly faster.

"Why isn't it going faster!? Are all primitive Earth vehicles this slow!?" Peridot complained, repeatedly stomping the gas pedal.

"What about that knobbly thing in the middle of the car?" Amblygonite asked.

Peridot grabbed the stick and tried to shove it around. It refused to move.

"FIND THE UNLOCKING SWITCH!" Amblygonite yelled, looking back at the police car giving chase. It was quickly catching up.

Peridot flailed, trying every switch she could find in the truck. The headlights flipped onto their brightest setting (The police car swerved slightly) and the windshield wipers started up. Then the washer fluid sprayed out, giving the windshield a much needed bath. In desperation, she slammed her foot on the third peddle in the car, trying the stick again. This time, with a terrible grinding noise as she damaged the gear box, the truck slid into the next gear and sped up slightly.

"Haha! These simple earth machines don't take long to figure out!" she crowed in victory.

"Turn coming up!" Amblygonite yelped, pointing ahead at a small curve in the road. A sign by the road depicted a line swerving wildly, presumably a warning that the curves would get worse. Amblygonite didn't need a translator to understand that and swallowed.

"Gotcha!" Peridot said, twisting the wheel mightily and watching out of the mirror as the truck swerved violently around the road.

The car pursuing them easily handled the curves, since its driver actually understood that his car should face forward and not be running in reverse. Also, he had his license.

"I think we're gonna have to go off-road to lose him, P!" Amblygonite yelled as they swerved around another curve in the road, thanking her stars that the clamp she had could maintain a tight grip in these circumstances.

"Find an opening then!" replied Peridot, who could now actually see the human chasing them in the other car. He looked both confused and very angry that this chase had gone on longer than five seconds.

"Uh...Uh...Turn right...NOW!" Amblygonite shouted. Peridot followed her directions a second later, sending the truck flying onto the grass, churning up dirt and mud as it flew backwards into the forest. Peridot was nearly thrown out of her seat and the truck tipped dangerously on its axis in the face of such a maneuver.

Amblygonite threw herself against the opposite side of the truck, slamming it back down on the other two wheels as it backpedaled into the forest. The police car stopped on the road and the officer stepped out, yelling something into a thing on his shoulder.

"Slow down, slow down!" hissed Amblygonite. "I think we've lost the human! If we go out the other side maybe we can find another path to take!"

Peridot numbly nodded her head, remembering in time to tap the brakes before the truck slid lovingly into a tree and ruined everything.

"Okay, uh...Try heading right..." Amblygonite started to guide.

It took an hour or two of careful negotiation, but they managed to escape to the other side of the thin forest, finding another road and cruising along backwards on it. In the distance, Amblygonite could see a strange flying thing hovering over the forest they had just left. She dismissed it from her mind as they crossed the horizon.

They drove in silence for a while, sometimes passing motorists who looked at them with great confusion. Most of them just pulled off to the side of the road since Peridot was choosing to ignore the lines in the middle of the road too. She actually seemed to be enjoying her "mastery" of driving a truck backwards, and Amblygonite wasn't going to spoil her mood by pointing out they had no idea where they were going now.

Another hour passed, and Amblygonite spotted something in the distance. It was one of those human things standing by the side of the road, holding up a sign!

"Hey Peridot! Slow down! There's another sign I wanna read!" Amblygonite said. "It might tell us where we're going!"

Peridot grunted, tapping the brakes until the truck came to a lurching stop. The human took a few steps back as the two gems dismounted and started towards him, but to his credit he didn't flee immediately.

"Okay, translate it!" Amblygonite said to Peridot, who frowned at her.

"Are you giving me orders?"

"J-just suggestions!"

The human coughed. "Uh, it says-"

Peridot's digits flew over to the sign, interrupting the man as they converged on the sign and began to translate the letters.

"Beach City...Or...Bust?" read Peridot, glancing at the human oddly. "What does this mean?"

"It means I wanna go to Beach City!" squeaked the man.

"Peridot! He could take us to Beach City!" Amblygonite said excitedly. "Wait. What's a Beach City?"

"Human," Peridot spoke up. The human froze, looking particularly frightened now. "Is there a large temple with beings such as us present in this 'Beach City'?"

"U-uh...Yeah?" he said, hoping like mad there actually were freaks like these two in that place.

"Very well. You may sit in the back and direct us."

"W-why wouldn't I sit in the front? And w-why are you guys driving backwards?" he asked, slapping a hand over his mouth at the look Peridot gave him.

"Do _you_ wish to drive, human?" she asked icily.

"I mean you can drive however you want haha I mean most people just drive forwards but hey it's cool if you do hahahahaha!" rattled the man, now terrified out of using commas completely.

"Peridot, you're scaring him. He probably thought you were threatening him."

"Threatening? I was merely asking whether he wished to directly navigate us to Beach City!" Peridot said defensively. "Do you really not want to drive?"

"I mean! Yes! I'll drive!" the man said, desperate to get the conversation over with.

He clambered into the front seat, turning off the windshield wipers and headlights with a glance at Peridot as she slid in next to him. Amblygonite took the man's advice and seated herself in the back of the front. Boy, that was a head spinner on paper. Two rows of seats for the front of one vehicle? Madness.

The human shifted the sticks in the front of the vehicle while both gems watched him with interest, and soon the truck was rumbling along facing the correct direction.

"So!" Amblygonite yelped, causing the man to shout and swerve the truck for a moment before straightening out.

"What's your title, human? I'm Amblygonite and this is Peridot!" She pointed to herself and Peridot despite the human desperately keeping his eyes straight forward.

"Er-Er...It's uh...K-Kenny. I'm Kenny. W-well my name is technically Kenneth but if I had f-friends they'd c-call me Kenny," he stuttered, laughing nervously as his eyes darted to Peridot, who was still watching him 'work' with interest. No doubt she was studying how to most effectively drive.

"Cool! That means we're friends then Kenny!" Amblygonite said cheerfully. "You know, for as long as it takes to get to Beach City. Then I guess you can have this thing since that's all we're using it for!"

"G-great," Kenny replied, hands sweating enough to make the wheel slip in his grip. He turned on the radio, making both gems jump out of shock as the news started playing

"...And we're back with a fresh report on the One Armed Bandits!" spoke the voice from the radio. Amblygonite and Peridot looked at each other.

"Yes, the police have confirmed they have lost site of the Bandits. They are driving a stolen truck, colored yellow, model-" Kenny switched the news over to a music station that was playing soothing classical music. His hands stopped trembling.

"How come they were talking about _you_ and not _me_?" complained Peridot. Amblygonite grinned. Kenny tried to ignore both of them as they trundled along. They had a long road ahead of them, long enough that he'd have to actually stay at least a day or two with them.

Kenny felt a bead of sweat drip down his forehead as Peridot and Amblygonite argued over which direction was best for the vehicle to face in while being driven.


End file.
